Consumer Credit, Debt and Bankruptcy

Comparative and International Perspectives

Johanna Niemi, Iain Ramsay, William C. Whitford, Johanna Niemi, Iain Ramsay, William C. Whitford

• Publisher: Hart Publishing
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9781841132587
• eBook ISBN: 9781847315229
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Bankruptcy & Insolvency Law
• Index: Law

After a long period of prosperity and steady economic growth, the world's leading economies are now in crisis, and although there will be debate about its origins, the scale and seriousness of the crisis is in no doubt. There is also no doubt that excessive amounts of consumer credit, allied to a weak understanding of how globalised credit markets might react to a crisis, have played a significant part. This book, which is primarily about credit, debt and the trouble they have led to, is written by authors who have specialised in researching into over-indebtedness, that is, situations in which an individual's debt burden has become overwhelming. For these authors the plight of individuals is a primary concern, but the wider issue is how credit is used and how it changes societies. The essays in this volume, addressing topics which are fundamental to our understanding of the current crisis, range widely across the whole sector of consumer finance, including mortgages, 'credit-binges', the regulation of consumer lending, insolvency, repayment plans, debt counselling and much more besides. The conclusions drawn from the book are equally wide-ranging, but above all the lesson learned from these essays is that the financialisation of contemporary life ensures that issues of the appropriate role of credit remain of critical importance in society.

Table of contents

• Prelims
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Inequality and Access to Financial Services
• 2 The Political Economy of Consumer Credit Securitization: Comparing Predatory Lending in Home Finance in the US, UK, Germany and Japan
• 3 Consumer Overindebtedness in Brazil and the Need for New Consumer Bankruptcy Legislation
• 4 ‘Wannabe WAGS’ and ‘Credit Binges’: The Construction of Overindebtedness in the UK
• 5 Overindebted Households and Law: Prevention and Rehabilitation in Europe
• 6 ‘A Call to Arms’—For Regulation of Consumer Lending
• 7 The Political Economy of the EC Consumer Credit Directive
• 8 Disclosure as an Imperfect Means for Addressing Overindebtedness: An Empirical Assessment of Comparative Approaches
• 9 Prevention of Overindebtedness and Mechanisms for Resolving Overindebtedness of South African Consumers
• 10 The Myth of the Cautious Consumer: Law, Culture, Economics and Politicsin the Rise and Partial Fall of Unsecured Lending in Japan
• 11 Making Sense of Nation-Level Bankruptcy Filing Rates
• 12 Overindebtedness and Financial Stress: A Comparative Study in Europe
• 13 Bankruptcy in Germany: Filing Rates and the People behind the Numbers
• 14 Elderly Consumer Weakness in ‘Withholding Credit’
• 15 Two Decades, Three Key Questions, and Evolving Answers in European Consumer Insolvency Law: Responsibility, Discretion, and Sacrifice
• 16 A Law-in-Action Approach to Comparative Study of Repayment Forms of Consumer Bankruptcy
• 17 Debt Agreements Down Under
• 18 Personal Bankruptcy in Korea
• 19 New Labour: More Debt— The Political Response
• 20 Debt Counselling in the Shadow of the Court: The Dutch Experience
• Index