ANSWER: Probably not, despite some attempts in the media to pretend otherwise.

I think Liz Pulliam Weston knows better than to claim (HT Free Market News Network) that “the bankruptcy boom is back.” She’s been a financial writer for too long not to know that the following is disingenuous, given the history of bankruptcies during the past quarter-century:

Consumer bankruptcy filings continue to increase, with Chapter 7 liquidation filings rising 54% in the second quarter compared to the previous three months.

Consumer bankruptcies had plunged following the passage of a tough new bankruptcy law last year.

By the second quarter, however, the pace of filings had picked up to 2,200 to 2,300 new filings per business day, more than four times the level in November 2005 after the bankruptcy law went into effect, according to Chris Lundquist, founder of Lundquist Consulting, which tracks bankruptcy trends.

Individuals filed 85,449 Chapter 7 cases in the three months ended June 30 and 142,815 bankruptcy cases overall, a 39% increase from the previous quarter. (Most consumer bankruptcies are either Chapter 7s, which allow people to erase most of their unsecured debts, or Chapter 13s, which require that at least some of the debt be repaid over time.)

Gimme a break, Liz:

• Total bankruptcies were roughly 1.5 million a year in 2002, 2003, and 2004.
• 2005 bankruptcies spiked in the fall of 2005 as the October 16 effective date of bankruptcy “reform” approached. There were 619,000 filings in the first half of October alone.
• So what does Liz do? She starts with November 2005, the month after the new law took effect, in an attempt to create the impression that there is a new wave of bankruptcies coming that may be as bad as the old wave (otherwise, why would she say it’s “back”?). Anybody with an ounce of sense would have to know that there would be a huge post-”reform” drop in the wake of the pre-”reform” rush. So OF COURSE it was going to take at least six months before anyone could get a reading on what the ongoing post-”reform” level of bankruptcies might be.
• It takes three paragraphs, a limited chart only dealing with 2006 filings, and about 10 more paragraphs before we start to learn that current bankruptcy filings are wayyyyyy below those that were occurring before the new law kicked in.
• If the second quarter figure she uses is correct (the courts haven’t released their second-quarter data as of Thursday morning, when this post was done) and that rate continues, the post-”reform” annual rate will be less than 600,000, or over 60% lower than the last three full pre-”reform” years. Some “boom.”

My take:

• The post-reform rate will probably be more on the order of 700,000 – 800,000 per year, hitting its peak in the first quarter of next year and pretty much staying there from that point forward.
• Whether this “permanent” reduction in annual filings of roughly 700,000 per year is a good thing totally depends on whether there is a rise in home foreclosures that offsets the reduced number of bankruptcy filings.
• Some initial indications in the mortgage market aren’t good (link requires free registration, plus a “grain of salt” warning, based on the organization that is predicting trouble ahead; it just so happens to be associated with vote fraud in Ohio), but it’s way too early to tell. If there is a rise in foreclosures, it may be more than partially driven by the kind of fraud described in this Boston Globe article (HT Wizbang) that targeted less-than-sophisticated Hispanic homebuyers, who as I noted last year (first item at link), are unfortunately and all too often perfect targets for unscrupulous lenders.
• On the other hand, the recent increase in refi-driven mortgage applications (link requires free registration) despite slightly higher rates may be a sign that those who need to refinance to avoid big increases in adustable-rate and interest-only deals they are currently in can do so.

If an increase in the rate at which families lose their homes offsets what would appear to be a permanent decrease in bankruptcy filings, I don’t see how anyone but the most hard-hearted could consider that an improvement. But, Liz, the jury’s still out.

Jason Coleman recounts it well (HT Ace), and relates what happened then to today’s attempts to recreate the same or similar nightmare, while disguising it as a utopian dream.

Matt at Weapons of Mass Discussion mentioned the ad Thursday morning.

85 celebrities and entertainment-industry types, including Nicole Kidman, Michael Douglas, Bruce Willis, and of course many others, underwrote a full-page ad (pictured here; backup for future here) in The Los Angeles Times condemning terrorism, including Hamas and Hezbollah specifically. It ended by saying, “We need to support democratic societies and stop terrorism at all costs.”

Now here’s the follow-up from Matt Sheffield at NewsBusters — The WORMs (Worn-Out Reactionary Media, known to most as the formerly Mainstream Media), are giving it the “la-la-la” treatment:

Have you heard the news of the latest celebrity political pronouncement?

….. Didn’t hear about it? That’s no surprise. According to Nexis, not a single American news organization other than Fox News Channel has covered it.

I did LA Times searches on ten of the signers’ names, and found nothing relating to the ad. So unless the paper could somehow write a story on the ad without mentioning the names of those who signed, the list of publications ignoring the ad, at least as of when this post was written late Friday night, includes The Los Angeles Times itself.

This is a great story about a classy man. Check out how he handled the film’s inadvertent identification of his race (August 24 update — via an e-mail from Made 4 the Internet, Channel 4 in Columbus has a story and a video):

NEW YORK — For years, authorities wondered about the identity of a U.S. Marine who appeared at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, helped find a pair of police officers buried in the rubble, then vanished.

Even the producers of the new film chronicling the rescue, “World Trade Center,” couldn’t locate the mystery serviceman, who had given his name only as Sgt. Thomas.

The puzzle was finally solved when one Jason Thomas, of Columbus, Ohio, saw a TV commercial for the new movie a few weeks ago as he relaxed on his couch.

His eyes widened as he saw two Marines with flashlights, hunting for survivors atop the smoldering ruins.

“That’s us. That’s me!” thought Thomas, who lived in Long Island during the attacks and now works as an officer in Ohio’s Supreme Court.

Thomas, 32, hesitantly re-emerged last week to recount the role he played in the rescue of Port Authority police officers Will Jimeno and Sgt. John McLoughlin, who were entombed beneath 20 feet of debris when the twin towers collapsed.

Back in New York to speak of his experience and visit family, Thomas provided the AP with photographs of himself at ground zero. As further proof of his identity, the movie’s producer, Michael Shamberg, said Thomas and Jimeno have spoken by phone and shared details only the two of them would know.

Thomas, who had been out of the Marine Corps about a year, was dropping his daughter off at his mother’s Long Island home when she told him planes had struck the towers.

He retrieved his Marine uniform from his truck, sped to Manhattan and had just parked his car when one of the towers collapsed. Thomas ran toward the center of the ash cloud.

“Someone needed help. It didn’t matter who,” he said. “I didn’t even have a plan. But I have all this training as a Marine, and all I could think was, ‘My city is in need.’”

Thomas bumped into another ex-Marine, Staff Sgt. David Karnes, and the pair decided to search for survivors.
Carrying little more than flashlights and an infantryman’s shovel, they climbed the mountain of debris, skirting dangerous crevasses and shards of red-hot metal, calling out “Is anyone down there? United States Marines!”

It was dark before they heard a response. The two crawled into a deep pit to find McLoughlin and Jimeno, injured but alive.

Jimeno would spend 13 hours in the pit before he was pulled free. Thomas stayed long enough to see him come up, but left due to exhaustion before McLoughlin, who remained pinned for another nine hours, was retrieved.

Thomas said he returned to ground zero every day for another 2 1/2 weeks to pitch in, then walked away and tried to forget.

“I didn’t want to relive what took place that day,” he said.

Shamberg said he apologized to Thomas for an inaccuracy in the film: Thomas is black, but the actor cast to portray him, William Mapother, is white. Filmmakers realized the mistake only after production had begun, Shamberg said.

Thomas laughed and gently chided the filmmakers, then politely declined to discuss it further. “I don’t want to shed any negativity on what they were trying to show,” he said.

This original entry from August 3 (”Professionals Hack a MacBook — and Make a Larger Point”) about WiFi card vulnerability, particularly in Apple’s MacBook laptops, was modified based on new information learned. What follows was added at the beginning of the entry.

+++++++++++++++++

August 18 UPDATE: It turns out the “presumably good guy” label in the very first sentence of the original post that begins below was VERY incorrect: (HT Techdirt):

Now it seems SecureWorks is backing away from its suggestion that MacBooks are just as vulnerable as other Wi-Fi-capable computers. The company has posted a disclaimer on its site to make it clear that the demonstration at Black Hat used a modified MacBook.

“This video presentation at Black Hat demonstrates vulnerabilities found in wireless device drivers,” the disclaimer says. “Although an Apple MacBook was used as the demo platform, it was exploited through a third-party wireless device driver–not the original wireless device driver that ships with the MacBook. As part of a responsible disclosure policy, we are not disclosing the name of the third-party wireless device driver until a patch is available.”

This is truly sad, especially in light of the snide comments from Dave Maynor and Jon “Johnny Cache” Ellch about Apple’s alleged security arrogance. It’s a trick right out of the same playbook as the rigged Dateline exploding gas tank in 1993, and it’s sickening.

Since I don’t pull posts, what is below will remain, and I’m coining a new term for people like Maynor and Ellch: MDS, or Mac Derangement Syndrome. The advice at the end of the piece (keep your wireless card off when not using it) is still a good idea, just not do-or-die urgently good.

++++++++++++++++++++

Now I’m the one hacked. As in REALLY “hacked off.” But the record is set straight — until the next MDS partisans try to put one over on us.