Time Magazine's take (payment required) on the bankruptcy problem:

Once upon a time, when both morals and money were harder, bankruptcy was bad. Wastrels used to be bailed out by their better-off relations in order to save the family name from the stigma. But in these days of looking-glass economics, bankruptcy is growing more and more fashionable as a way to settle one's debts and land some more credit.

The story, "Making Bankruptcy Pay," appeared on February 22. The year: 1963.

Bankruptcy opponents have been recycling this "once upon a time" line for the past 42 years (and then some). But it looks like our morals still had a long way to fall since '63. Check out law professor Todd Zywicki's Congressional testimony in February of 2005:

Regrettably, the personal shame and social stigma that once restrained opportunistic bankruptcy filings has declined substantially in recent years.

They can't both be right, can they? Maybe values repeatedly drop, then sermons like Time's and Todd's repeatedly restore them. That would mean morals were in a tail spin through the '50s, and hit rock bottom by early '63 -- just ahead of the Beatles' socially corrosive hit "I Want To Hold Your Hand."

Or maybe morals have been in decline since the stone age. Consider this Congressional testimony:

Dishonest people make it a practice to go into debt to these merchants for the necessaries of life and then seek the bankruptcy courts to get relief from the payment of such debts. We ought to go back to the old-fashioned primitive doctrine that requires the payment of all honest debts. . . . Let us go back to honest and fundamental principles.

Yes, as this 1910 Congressman nicely observed, recent moral downturns must be to blame for all these opportunistic bankruptcies. We would all be better off if we returned to a primitive age of honest and fundamental principles.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to finish my hunting and gathering.

[thanks to David A. Moss, Gibbs A. Johnson, The Rise of Consumer Bankruptcy: Evolution, Revolution, or Both?]

Jon Lackow is a new member of the team and fellow law student. A formal introduction to the newest members of our blog team is forthcoming. -MN