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Strategies & Market Trends : Anthony @ Equity Investigations, Dear Anthony, -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kevin Podsiadlik who wrote (52416)	3/5/2000 1:32:00 AM
From: nihil	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 122087

I think you are right. Discharge in bankruptcy is almost absolute (unless you have concealed assets). The discharged bankrupt has no legal obligation to repay, and in fact, if he tries, he can be burdened with all of his unpaid discharged debts. It is dangerous to repay "debts of honor" to certain former creditors because this rearranges the order of the debts ordered by the court. Morality and bankruptcy have nothing to do with each other. One purpose of bankruptcy is to free the debtor for another clean start. A bankrupt becomes a good credit risk for seven years or so because he may not voluntarily declare bankruptcy in that period. He can be hounded by his post-discharge creditors incessantly. Before bankruptcy, of course, we had debtors' prisons, and bankruptcy was mandated to Congress by the Constitution to prevent debtor's prisons becoming or remaining the standard way of debt collection. Before debtors' prisons we had slavery. The creditor was able physically to seize the debtor's property and sell his family and person into slavery. If a nation wishes to encourage entrepreneurship, it will develop some way of relieving debtors without robbing creditors. Hard to take a risk if one might be imprisoned or sold into slavery for making a bad investment. In the U.S. a discharged bankrupt is not a criminal. He has no legal obligation to repay his unsatisfied creditors. His moral obligation depends on the specific brand of morality he adopts. Christians, of course, may not hold their debtors liable even before discharge as long as they pray, with Jesus, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors ... "