As We Forgive Our Debtors: Bankruptcy and Consumer Credit in America

Teresa A. Sullivan · Elizabeth Warren · Jay Lawrence Westbrook

Jan 1999 · Beard Books

About this ebook

Bankruptcy in America is a booming business, with hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans filing for bankruptcy each year. Is this dramatic growth a result of mushrooming debt or does it reflect a moral decline that permits the middle class to evade their debts? As We Forgive Our Debtors addresses these questions with hard empirical data drawn from bankruptcy court filings. The authors of this multidisciplinary study describe the law and the statistics in clear, nontechnical language, combining a thorough statistical description of the social and economic position of consumer bankrupts with human portraits of the debtors and creditors whose journeys have ended in bankruptcy court. Book jacket.

About the author

Teresa A. Sullivan is Vice President and Graduate Dean and professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. Elizabeth Warren worked as an elementary school teacher, a lawyer, and a law professor at Harvard University. She is the senior senator from Massachusetts. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, she served as Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Her efforts to protect taxpayers, to hold Wall Street accountable, and to ensure tough oversight of both the Bush and Obama Administrations won praise from both sides of the aisle. The Boston Globe named her Bostonian of the Year in 2009 for her oversight efforts. She helped created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She is also the author of numerous books including All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan, The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke, and A Fighting Chance.