It’s great to be a permanent addition to Credit Slips. This blog has become a really great forum for discussing credit and debt issues, and I’m looking forward to contributing to the conversation. It’s a nice way to start a new year.
As it is New Year’s Eve, people are making resolutions, including about their finances, and that puts me in the mood to think about how to measure the effect of the BAPCPA on bankruptcy and credit. (Happy New Year, btw).
One way to measure the effect of the BAPCPA is to look at credit card charge-off rates. Credit card issuers have to charge off debts that are 180 days delinquent or otherwise uncollectable, such as by a bankruptcy discharge. Below the break are two graphs (my apologies for the HTML layout issues), one showing historical credit card charge-off levels, and the other the percentage of those charge-offs related to bankruptcy.