More Evidence The Recession Continues

Wall Street seems to have fully recovered from their little bump in the road, and once again they are enjoying bonuses larger than the yearly salaries of most people (the ones that still have a job). And the rich just keep getting richer. For these people the recession is over. But for most people it just continues.

The country still has 12-15 million less jobs than it did just a few years ago and the housing market seems to be sliding back into the dumper. Now we have another indicator that shows the economic pain being felt by many people. Bankruptcies are climbing.

During the first half of 2010 bankruptcies climbed a full 14% when compared to this time last year. From January through June of 2010 770,117 people filed for bankruptcy. During the first half of 2009 (when everyone admits the recession was raging) the figure was 675,351. It is expected that the bankruptcy filings will top 1.6 million by the end of 2010.

This is the highest number of bankruptcy filings since 2005 -- the year Republicans passed a harsh law making it harder to declare bankruptcy. The reason the number was high that year is because many people rushed to file before the harsh new law took effect. Many of those people might have been able to avoid bankruptcy had they not been scared into declaring it by the passage of the new law.

But all of the bankruptcies of 2010 are under the new harsher law. They are real, and indicative of a growing number of people that just can't make ends meet in the current economic climate. The recession may be over for the rich, but it just keeps plugging along for the rest of us -- and it probably will for quite a while.

When we see several months of strong job growth, the housing market shows some credible strength, and bankruptcies begin to fall instead of rising then I will believe that maybe we are beginning to climb out of the recession. So far, none of that is happening.