Category: Books and Movies about Debt

  • A Three-Hour Tour and Other Distractions

    Posted by

    Melissa Jacoby

    MichiganRoadsThe City of Detroit has proposed a three-hour bus tour of the City to start its chapter 9 plan confirmation hearing. Some creditors object. The City's motion says "[i]f any case ever warranted a Site Visit, this one does." I don't agree, for reasons explored below, but in any event, the eligibility trial would have been a more logical place for it. And even Gilligan and the Skipper too couldn't cover 139 square miles in three hours. So what is going on here?

    A step back. In the earliest days of my bankruptcy court clerkship, the United States Trustee sought to dismiss or convert the chapter 11 of a small nonprofit on the south side of Chicago. The debtor and the U.S. Trustee parties presented starkly contrasting depictions of this debtor – I remember the dueling photographs – with neither more obviously credible than the other. The case, like most in the bankruptcy court, had a starkly human element: the debtor was a rehabilitation center of sorts. The U.S. Trustee essentially was alleging that the residents lived in deplorable conditions, and the debtor strongly disagreed. To resolve the discrete factual dispute between two parties about the property's condition, Judge Ginsberg decided to schedule a time to leave the modernist skysraping box that was the Dirksen Federal Courthouse and visit the premises, in a van, with law clerk, court reporter, and others in tow. No easy way to verify -  the name of the case is lost to me now – but my strong recollection is that the site visit idea prompted no objections. The case cratered for an unrelated reason, mooting the trip. No other case during my clerkship prompted Judge Ginsberg to make a similar proposal.

    Over the years, I have learned of other judges' experiences with site visits, revealing similar characteristics: cases with limited parties in interest, specific factual disagreement, the resolution of which could be accomplished efficiently by visiting circumscribed sites. 

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  • Consumer Finance Movie: Spent: Looking for Change

    Posted by

    Adam Levitin

    I just saw Spent: Looking for Change, a documentary about the financial challenges of the unbanked. The film was funded by American Express, but there is no marketing of Amex products in the film. (Amex does offer one of the best non-DDA account options for the unbanked, however.) You can watch the movie for free on YouTube.
    The movie really puts a human face on the problems of the unbanked. It doesn't get into solutions (that would take a Peter Jackson trilogy), but it does a great job of setting forth what life is like for the unbanked. Highly recommended.

  • Working and Living in the Shadow of Economic Fragility

    Posted by

    Melissa Jacoby

    OupbookCredit Slips readers, please note the publication of a new book edited by Marion Crain and Michael Sherraden. The New America Foundation is hosting an event on the book tomorrow, Wednesday, May 28, 2014 at 12:15 EST. Not in Washington, D.C.? The event will be webcast live. 

    The book project developed out of a stimulating multi-disciplinary conference at Washington University in St. Louis. Participants had great interest in considering how bankruptcy scholarship fits within the larger universe of research on financial insecurity and inequality. My chapter with Mirya Holman synthesizes the literature on medical problems among bankruptcy filers and presents new results from the 2007 Consumer Bankruptcy Project on coping mechanisms for medical bills, looking more closely at the one in four respondents who reported accepting a payment plan from a medical provider. Not surprisingly, these filers are far more likely than most others to bring identifiable medical debt, and therefore their medical providers, into their bankruptcy cases. We examine how payment plan users employ strategies – including but not limited to fringe and informal borrowing – to manage financial distress before resorting to bankruptcy, and (quite briefly) speculate on the future of medical-related financial distress in an Affordable Care Act world.

  • American Hustle

    Posted by

    Jean Braucher

    If you want to understand credit and its abuses, you have to delve into the human heart, in all its weakness and strength, and literature and film are powerful ways to do so.  In this observation, I join the growing backlash (see, for example, here and here) against the philistine notion that the humanities are a waste of time.  Literature and history can teach us at least as much as the social sciences and often are better written and more insightful about the nuances of our psyches.

    Arguably the most fertile period of American cultural production was the mid-19th century, when  Edgar Allan Poe, one of America’s first professional authors, examined closely the techniques of scamming, quickly joined by other literary greats such as Herman Melville and Mark Twain.  See here for my paper on this subject. Poe was also the first to link scammers’ motivations to the spirit of Wall Street.  Defining a scammer as working on a small scale, Poe also connected the dots to grand predators: “Should he ever be tempted into magnificent speculation, he then, at once, loses his distinctive features, and becomes what we term ‘financier.’”  See here for source.

    David O. Russell provides a fresh take on this point in a must-see new movie—just in time for the holidays.  American Hustle’s dark wit speaks to the loss of any remaining American innocence in the lingering wake of the Great Bubble and Pop.

    Set in the seedy late 1970s, the film lushly renders the world of runaway inflation, terrible clothes, shaggy hair (and comb-overs), disco fever, rising divorce rates, and rundown real estate for which the decade is remembered.   But it tells a timeless tale of raw ambition for riches and status turning every human interaction into a con.

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  • Living down the Lattes

    Posted by

    Katie Porter

    Credit Slips is a virtual community so very few of you know that I go to Starbucks at least once a day, although a small detail in the pic here was a hint in that direction. It's not a cheap habit, as personal finance writers have observed here and here. But does it drive people to financial ruin, or even indicate a failure of sound financial habits?

    I've never thought so. The decades of research on consumer bankruptcy show that the big 3–job problems, medical problems, and family changes–are underlying structural problems. My thoughts on the "latte problem" are now enshrined in print in Helaine Olen's new book, Pound Foolish. It's tone is largely that of an expose, which makes for fun reading, although academics may find some of the research a bit light. But part of the problem that the book reveals is the lack of innovative solutions to improve financial advice. Certainly the CFPB has undertaken this as a major part of its mission. I'd love to hear readers' suggestions for innovative (not more junior high financial education, please) ways to get people to be more critical "consumers" of financial advice and to take the time and effort to make strides toward their financial goals. In the meantime, I'll enjoy my latte and procrastinate on rebalancing my retirement portfolio!

  • Crisis books

    Posted by

    Alan White

    I recently stumbled on this excellent compendium of more than 300 books on the financial crisis.  It also includes a list of 25 or so books that predicted the crisis, as well as a useful link to an annotated list of individuals who can be given credit for predicting various aspects of the crisis.

  • The Stakes Of Design

    Posted by

    Melissa Jacoby

    SlotThat 99% invisible is a vibrant architecture and design podcast might have been beside the point in Credit Slips land — but for the fact that its current show (Episode 78) focuses on the design and technology of casino slot machines, and the particular profitability of penny slot machines. The short piece is built on the work of M.I.T. professor and anthropologist Natasha Dow Schüll. Lots on the consumer finance and cognitive behavioral side of things; don't expect any mention of bankrupt casinos.

    Slot photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

  • Brains for Hire

    Posted by

    Melissa Jacoby

    Posting again on fiction so soon? Not the original intention, but I recently read a story that skirts around the substantive core of Credit Slips, as well as the fabulous work of sociologist Viviana Zelizer, a past Credit Slips guest. Blame or gratitude can be sent c.o.d. to Charles Yu, a lawyer when he is not writing things like Standard Loneliness Package (also in Yu's recently published collection). The thirty-nine year old narrator receives 12/hour to absorb the pain and bad feelings from wealthy customers who pay 100, 200, 2,000/hour to be devoid of such pain and bad feelings. The price varies for watching a loved one die, a funeral, surgeries, root canal, breakups, firings, quittings, nose dives in the stock market (priced higher than some deaths). The company will not quote a price for death of a child.

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  • The Entertainment and Sports Programming Network Looks at Bankrupt Athletes

    Posted by

    Bob Lawless

    In its acclaimed "30 for 30" series, ESPN is airing a show about professional athletes who go bust after leaving their sport. From ESPN's web site (which also has a trailer for the show):

    According to a 2009 Sports Illustrated article, 60 percent of NBA
    players are broke within five years of retirement. For 78 percent of NFL
    players, it takes only three years. Sucked into bad investments,
    stalked by freeloaders, saddled with medical problems, and naturally
    prone to showing off, many pro athletes get shocked by harsh economic
    realities after years of living the high life. Drawing surprisingly
    vulnerable confessions from retired stars like Keith McCants, Bernie
    Kosar and Andre Rison, as well as Marvin Miller, the former executive
    director of the MLB Players Association, this fascinating documentary
    digs into the psychology of men whose competitive nature can carry them
    to victory on the field and ruin off it.

    The episode, simply titled "Broke," airs in the U.S. at 8:00 PM (ET) on October 2 on ESPN.

    Hat tip to my former student and current Chicago bankruptcy lawyer, Frank Venis, for drawing this to my attention. And, yeah, I know it has not really been the "Entertainment and Sports Programming Network" since 1985, but the full name has been seared into my brain ever since a moment of personal ignominy in a college sports trivia contest.

  • Financial Failure Fiction (and Poetry)

    Posted by

    Melissa Jacoby

    If I am not mistaken, it has been a while since Credit Slips has featured discussions of "bankruptcy literature." So I thought I would report that I just finished The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter, whom Janet Maslin called a "deft humorist and catastrophist" back in 2009. The book is a powerful reminder that literary writers and others in the art and culture worlds have amazing tools to capture the spiral downward and the third-party effects. And behold a writer who dares to use not only the term bankruptcy, but to distinguish between its constituent chapters. Disclosure: this book would not be rated PG (at least in my naive world) and it is deliberately outlandish. Taking it literally could produce extreme lack of sympathy for the indebted financial reporter-poet protagonist. You might like this book if you are a fan of, say, The Information by Martin Amis, The Ask by Sam Lipsyte, or Straight Man by Richard Russo. Readers out there, feel free to share your take on Walter's book (and name any other recent works of fiction that you think do it as well or better). Apparently, the book is being turned into a movie with Jack Black, directed by Michael Winterbottom. 

    Regardless of the outcome in the book, let's not give up on the idea of online financial reporting and advice in the form of poetry (making a living on it is a different story). Perhaps one of the Credit Slips gang will be inspired to give it a try on this site? Stay tuned.