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The stat comes from a new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research. It may be hard to believe that professional athletes, who earn so much money at such a young age, could possibly end up bankrupt. But nearly 16% of those in the National Football League do—just not right away. According to a new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), 15.7% of NFL players have filed for bankruptcy 12 years after they retired. The paper, entitled “Bankruptcy Rates Among NFL Players with Short-Lived Income Spikes,” examines the traditional model of consumption smoothing (save money...

General Motors Co will not have to face dozens of lawsuits accusing it of concealing an ignition-switch defect that has been blamed for more than 200 deaths and serious injuries, a U.S. bankruptcy judge ruled on Wednesday. Plaintiffs in the lawsuits said the company violated their constitutional rights by failing to disclose the defect, while GM had argued it was protected from claims on vehicles pre-dating its 2009 exit from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The decision by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Gerber means GM may avoid potentially billions of dollars in liability, as well as the cost of defending those lawsuits,...

A plan to salvage RadioShack Corp’s RSHCQ.PK business by co-branding most of its 1,740 surviving stores with cellular phone provider Sprint Corp (S.N) earned U.S. bankruptcy court approval on Tuesday, ending four days of contested court hearings. The stores are what survived of more than 4,000 outlets after RadioShack went bankrupt in February. Founded in 1921, the chain was a go-to retailer for electronics before becoming increasingly irrelevant in the digital age. Judge Brendan Shannon, in Delaware bankruptcy court, approved a sale of the stores to the Standard General hedge fund, which plans to keep most of them open under...

The nation's largest chain of Christian retail stores has withdrawn its controversial bankruptcy plan, according to a court filing yesterday. The decision by Family Christian Stores (FCS) comes after dozens of Christian publishers sued the ministry over $20 million of consignment inventory, and both the US Trustee and creditors committee objected to how the sale plan would allegedly benefit one of FCS' owners.

To the outsider, CalPERS — the largest U.S. pension fund, created by California state law and run by an arm of the state of California — may seem like the champion of the working man, fighting for the rights of municipal employees and pensioners. But that perception may be undeserved, per the Chapter 9 bankruptcy of Stockton, Calif., where CalPERS sought to shift to taxpayers (an even larger and more sympathetic party than CalPERS) the financial burden to support what some consider CalPERS' outrageous costs. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Klein openly opined, "CalPERS has bullied its way about in this...

Associated Wholesale Grocers plans to convert five of seven Dahl’s Foods stores in Iowa to the Price Chopper banner in early April and two others, in the Des Moines market, to a new, unspecified format, according to published reports. Kansas City, Kansas-based AWG acquired the stores in January following Dahl’s bankruptcy filing in November. Price Chopper is an AWG-licensed name used by 51 members in Kansas.

Is the Chicago pension system so messed up and union work rules so entrenched the only way to change either of them is bankruptcy? I think so. So does Dennis Byrne who wrote on his blog today Chicago's Only Salvation: A Detroit-Like Bankruptcy. This is a guest post from Byrne. Chicago's Only Salvation: A Detroit-Like Bankruptcy Wait, I thought only the Republican Party was being torn asunder by a rift between the establishment middle and the fringe. That impression was nailed down, again, last week by the embarrassing fracture among House Republicans over funding for the Department of Homeland Security....

Back in March 2014 we forecast that it in the aftermath of the US State Department-sponsored coup in Kiev, it was only a matter of time before Ukraine (all of its sovereign gold having since "vaporized") succumbed to full blown hyperinflation and economic implosion. Less than a year later, precisely this outcome has finally played out, and as a result, the entire nation has finally entered its economic endgame, which has two conclusions: either it joins Greece in becoming a ward of Europe and the IMF (thank you Joe Q taxpayer), or it quietly fades away into insolvent "failed state"...

GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- Family Christian Stores, the nation's largest Christian bookstore and gift chain, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in hopes of restructuring its debt in the face of declining sales. The Grand Rapids-based chain said it does not expect to close any of its 266 stores in 36 states or layoff any of its 3,100 full-time and part-time employees. "We strive to serve God in all that we do and trust his guidance in all our decisions, especially this very important one," said President and CEO Chuck Bengochea in a news release. "We have carefully and prayerfully...

CEO: 'We have carefully and prayerfully considered every option.'Family Christian Stores (FCS) has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Yet the ministry assured customers yesterday that it "does not expect" to close any of its more than 250 stores or lay off any of its approximately 4,000 employees. “We strive to serve God in all that we do and trust His guidance in all our decisions, especially this very important one,” stated FCS president and CEO Chuck Bengochea. “We have carefully and prayerfully considered every option. This action allows us to stay in business and continue to serve our customers,...

For years, RadioShack — the retailer that helped bring personal computers to the masses — outlasted untold predictions that it would buckle in the face of bigger rivals and online competitors. But its clock has finally run out. RadioShack, a long-ailing 94-year-old electronics chain, filed for bankruptcy protection on Thursday after striking a deal to sell up to 2,400 of its stores to the wireless service provider Sprint and a hedge fund that is its biggest shareholder. The Chapter 11 filing, made in federal bankruptcy court in Delaware, took few unaware. RadioShack had not turned a profit since 2011, and...

Electronics retailer RadioShack Corp filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and said shareholder Standard General LP would buy 1,500 to 2,400 of its stores. RadioShack listed assets of $1.2 billion and liabilities of $1.39 billion in its bankruptcy petition in a Delaware court.

In naming an emergency manager for Atlantic City on Thursday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie left the door open for the seaside gambling resort to file for bankruptcy if it can’t get its finances under control. The Republican governor and likely presidential candidate appointed a corporate turnaround specialist as the city’s emergency manager, and tabbed the man who led Detroit through its municipal bankruptcy as his assistant. Corporate finance consultant Kevin Lavin will have broad powers over Atlantic City’s finances and operations. Kevyn Orr, who helped lead Detroit through a financial crisis, will serve as special counsel to Lavin. Christie...

ALCO stores nationwide, including those in South Hutchinson and 21 other small Kansas communities, are closing. The stores, which typically serve small towns with few other options for everything from clothing to housewares and groceries, began conducting going-out-of-business sales on Friday morning, a day after a U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Dallas authorized ALCO’s owners – Tiger Capital Group LLC, SB Capital Group LLC and Great American Group LLC – to begin doing so. In all, 198 stores in 23 states will close, as will the 113-year-old discount retailer’s 352,000-square-foot distribution center in Abilene. During the liquidation sale, the company plans...

Following the start of Abenomics in 2012, Japan moved back to the center of attention of global financial markets. After two and a half decades of economic stagnation, hopes were high that Japan would escape its long stagnation and deflation. Plenty of economists around the globe hoped that, in so doing, Japan would show the western world, mainly the Eurozone, the way to do the same and avoid a similar long period of low growth and stagnating incomes. Conversely, the failure of AbeÂ’s plan for JapanÂ’s recovery would not only be a disaster for the country of the rising sun....

Bitcomposer, the publisher of games such as Space Hulk and Jagged Alliance, has filed for bankruptcy after having applied for a protective shield procedure back in September. The company also published Shadowrun Returns in German and Russian. The procedure was applied for on September 26th and protected the company from creditors while it organised a plan for insolvency, reports Develop. It was still able to publish titles in the period of time between then and now, and hopes to find an investor at this point to ensure it can continue to operate as a publisher and aid with development. Bitcomposer...

The death toll for General Motors' faulty ignition switch victims continues to rise with the last reported number being 42. There has been speculation that the death count is significantly higher, as safety advocate Clarence Ditlow has written to GM to request an expansion of efforts to uncover victims of accidents resulting from defective GM vehicles. GM has known about the ignition switch defect for years and failed to recall the deadly vehicles for almost five years after the Obama Administration took over the company in June of 2009. President Obama's Auto Task Force guided the company through a...

With Detroit emerging from bankruptcy yesterday, its experience under Chapter 9 was apparently so successful (occasional subsequent massive power outage notwithstanding), that suddenly every other insolvent city in the US is also i) admitting it is in dire straits and ii) hoping to recreate the Detroit experience. Enter East Cleveland. As Bloomberg Brief reports, the council president in East Cleveland said if she had her way, the city would follow Detroit's path and become Ohio's first municipality to file for bankruptcy to help solve its fiscal woes.State Auditor Dave Yost said the suburb of 17,500, where oil baron John...

Kevyn Orr has agreed to step down as Detroit’s emergency manager, saying in a letter released Tuesday that the city will no longer be in a financial emergency once it exits bankruptcy. Orr also told Gov. Rick Snyder in his letter, dated Monday, that he has implemented the city’s two-year budget that reflects the elimination of about $7 billion in debt through the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. […] Orr—a turnaround expert who helped steer Chrysler through the automaker’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy—had been the official face of Detroit government since he was appointed in March 2013 by Snyder. …

Sears is shutting down hundreds of stores. The chain announced today that it is accelerating store closings to 235 this year, 100 more than previously planned. Sears' total net loss for the quarter was $296 million. Sears' and K-Mart's collapse is "inevitable" and could happen by the year 2016, retail analyst and author Robin Lewis writes on his blog. "These two retail brands are dead men walking," Lewis writes. "As a retailer they're at the point of no return," David Tawil, cofounder of Maglan Capital and an expert in distressed retail companies, told Business Insider earlier this year. "The real...