Going for broke - courts can't keep up with company failures

The law can't cope with the number of companies going broke.

It's becoming a world wide picture.

NBR reports Auckland’s High Court has had to schedule extra sessions to cope with the increasing number of companies going under.

The number of businesses being placed into liquidation is rising dramatically as the recession bites: last week in Auckland alone, more than 100 companies were called in court proceedings to be closed or placed into liquidation.

In the UK, a company which broadcasts English Premier League football under the name GTV to tens of thousands of subscribers across Africa has gone into liquidation.

In Minnesota today, the newspaper, the Star Tribune's move to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy puts 1,400 local workers' jobs in limbo.

A bombshell of a week

What a bombshell of a week.

Carved out from the landscape are many thousands of jobs and businesses collapsed or on the verge of it.

Quote of the week: "Everybody is trying to figure out how to survive"

It's from Brian Bethune, economist at IHS Global Insight and makes it sound as if a Hiroshima-type bomb has devastated the land.

But he's right as it's the way many people are feeling.

People have stopped spending. Warehouses are full of goods no-one at home or abroad want or can afford or use. Manufacturing has stopped.

And the layoffs this week? Who can keep up. Ford, NEC, Cessna, Kodak, Black & Decker, Boeing Co., Pfizer, Caterpillar, Home Depot, Target Corp, Starbucks, Saks, Warner Bros, Intel. Here's a list of the 100,000 or more in the US alone.

The records keep falling. Worst January ever for the Dow, the US economy's last quarter shrunk by more than since 1982 - meaning the USeconomy shrank at the fastest pace in 26 years.

And US unemployment lines have stretched to the longest on record, a sign that the U.S. labor market continues to worsen.

(Bomb photo credit: US National Archives)