Chez Chesler

It looks like Bankruptcy Reform passed today. Plenty of Todd Zywecki's analyses the he's posted on Volokh Conspiracy seem quite accurate. Credit Cards don't cause bankruptcy, they're just how we live today, the bankrupt and the solvent. Some large number of bankrupts had large medical expenses, but "large" was defined as $500 over two years. Besides, medical expenses sound like a good excuse, so that's the bankrupt's story and he's sticking to it. But there's also talk about fraud. Tom Blumer on the BizzyBlog asks if it's fraud to fail to report as an asset a half-empty shampoo bottle. The SMR report asks:

• Average debt per petition for recently made store and other credit card charges was $21,576. But the average value per petition of all household-type assets accumulated over a lifetime was $2,009. What happened to all the other stuff they just bought?

and I'm reminded of Steve Martin's problem in Cat Handcuffs. He couldn't return the $3,000 of cat toys that his cat had bought under his name, because they had cat spit all over them.