Beesiness News - Sharp rise in business bankruptcies

McClatchy's Tony Pugh uncovers an underreported trend in commercial bankruptcy filings. They are up 17% in the second quarter of 2008 and 45% for the first half of this year from the first half of 2007.

It was the 10th straight quarter that business bankruptcy filings have increased. Nearly 29,000 companies filed in the first half of 2008.
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Robert Lawless, a law professor at the University of Illinois and a bankruptcy expert, has researched and written about the federal government's underreporting of business bankruptcies. He estimates that roughly one in seven people who file for consumer bankruptcy do so in connection with their businesses. (emphasis added)

The bleeding doesn't stop with bankruptcies either.

Another 60,000 to 90,000 others probably have closed, because roughly two to three businesses fold for every one that files for bankruptcy, said Jack Williams, resident scholar at the American Bankruptcy Institute.

Check out the article for all the figures and complete picture, complemented with graphs of the national increase by quarter and the states have been hit hardest.