COUPLE INDICTED FOR BANKRUPTCY FRAUD Jordana Mishory, The Arizona Republic SCOTTSDALE - The U.S. Attorney's Office indicted a local couple on charges of Bankruptcy fraud, alleging that they used the money they owed to purchase a $305,000 Scottsdale home. The indictment alleges that Andrew Taylor, 50, and his wife Sandee, 44, filed 5 voluntary Bankruptcy Petitions over a 6-year period with no intention of repaying the money they owed. According to Sandy Raynor, spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Phoenix, the couple failed to disclose they had previously filed Bankruptcy or to reveal some of their assets such as bank accounts and title to an aircraft. The Taylors are also indicted on charges of concealment of assets and false declarations in a Bankruptcy proceeding. The Internal Revenue Service was one of their creditors and conducted the investigation with the assistance of the Office of the U.S. Bankruptcy Trustee. _____________________ CREDIT CARD SOLICITATIONS SHARE BLAME FOR MIDDLE CLASS BANKRUPTCY Suein Hwang, Staff Reporter, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Last year there were more than 1.6 million Bankruptcy filings, compared with 875,000 a decade earlier. Some experts say much of the increase is being driven by older people, many of whom have decades of work experience in white-collar jobs. The Consumer Bankruptcy Project, which surveyed 2,400 filers in 2001 and 1991, found that on a per capita basis older people are now the most likely to file. In 2001, for instance, per capita filings of individuals ages 45 to 54 increased 58% to 11 per thousand. "The curve is moving to the right," says Elizabeth Warren, a professor at Harvard University Law School, who co-authored the study. "It reflects a more frightening reality for a wide swath of middle-class America." Many of today's Bankrupt baby boomers simply weren't as frugal as their Depression-era parents. But the increase in middle-age people filing for Bankruptcy is also attributed to soaring medical costs, an unstable job market and years of aggressive credit-card marketing. The number of credit-card solicitations in the U.S. grew to 4.29 billion in 2003, from 1.52 billion a decade earlier, according to Chicago research-firm Synovate Inc.'s Mail Monitor service. Last year, Federal Reserve data showed total revolving consumer debt at more than $734.1 billion, compared with $238.6 billion in 1990. Ben B. Floyd, a personal-Bankruptcy Trustee in Houston for the past 30 years says he is now seeing people "who obviously had a white-collar background. They come in looking lost." Personal-Bankruptcy lawyers across the country say they've witnessed a sea change in their practices, seeing older clients with longer work histories. "These people didn't take their credit cards to Atlantic City," says Gabriel Del Virginia, a New York bankruptcy Attorney. "It's largely because people lost their jobs or had a catastrophic illness." ___________________ CONSUMER SPENDING SEES BIG DROP Washington Post WASHINGTON - American consumer spending dropped 0.7 percent in June, the steepest monthly fall since September 2001, the government reported Tuesday. With income growth stalling as well, the numbers raised new concerns about the strength of the economic expansion. Overall personal income — which includes wages, salaries and income from dividends, interest, rents, self-employment and other sources — rose by 0.2 percent in June, the slowest monthly increase in more than a year, the Commerce Department reported. But personal income was flat after adjusting for inflation and taxes, the report showed. Wages and salaries fell after adjusting for inflation.