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CHARLESTON, W.Va. Patriot Coal Corp. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Tuesday for the second time in three years. The company made the filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. It had emerged from an earlier bankruptcy case in December 2013 in Missouri. Patriot said it is involved in active negotiations for the sale of its operating assets to a strategic partner. Patriot said it will continue shipping and mining operations and it has received a commitment for $100 million in debt financing from secured debt holders that it did not identify.

NEW YORK--Patriot Coal Corp. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday, the largest casualty of the worst U.S. market for the power-plant fuel in decades. U.S. demand for coal has slumped this year as utilities favored cheaper natural gas, as prices of that fuel hit decade lows amid a supply glut. Coal miners, including Patriot Coal, have slashed production and laid off workers in an effort to match supply to weakening demand. Coal accounted for 35% of U.S. electricity generation during the first four months of the year, according to the Energy Information Administration, down from 44% during the same...

Bidder offers just €10,000 for showpiece in Spanish bankruptcy auction. A Chinese company that was the only bidder for one of Spain's "ghost airports" wants to revive the site as a cargo hub for the Asian market. Ciudad Real airport, one of the most notorious emblems of Spain's economic crash, cost €1 billion (HK$8.4 billion) to build and was on sale at a knockdown price of €40 million. Tzaneen International was the sole bidder in the bankruptcy auction, however, and it offered just €10,000. The facilities of the deserted site, 160km south of Madrid, include a runway long enough to...

There has been so much attention on Greece in recent weeks, but the truth is that Greece represents only a very tiny fraction of an unprecedented global debt bomb which threatens to explode at any moment. As you are about to see, there are 24 nations that are currently facing a full-blown debt crisis, and there are 14 more that are rapidly heading toward one. Right now, the debt to GDP ratio for the entire planet is up to an all-time record high of 286 percent, and globally there is approximately 200 TRILLION dollars of debt on the books. That...

Rapper 50 Cent filed for bankruptcy on Monday. The news came as bit of a surprise since The New York Times just described him as a man of "exceptional business instincts" less than a week ago. In May, Forbes pegged his net worth at $155 million. 50 Cent, aka Curtis Jackson III, reportedly earned between $60 million and $100 million from a stake in Vitamin Water when it sold to Coca-Cola in 2007, according to The Washington Post. Yet in the abbreviated Chapter 11 filing Monday, Jackson's lawyers said that his assets range from $10 million to $50 million, including...

Rapper 50 Cent has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Monday. "In court papers filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Hartford, Conn., Mr. Jackson reported assets and debts each in the range of $10 million to $50 million," reports the Wall Street Journal. The filing comes just three days after the "Get Rich or Die Tryin'" rapper was ordered to pay $5 million to a woman who sued him for posting a sex tape online. Previously, 50 Cent was recently reported to be worth around $270 million, largely thanks to his minority stake in Vitamin Water. In 2007, the...

<p>Jeb Bush apparently doesn’t want people to know that he worked at Lehman Brothers, the now-defunct investment bank whose collapse led to the broader financial meltdown in 2008.</p> <p>That’s the only conclusion I can come to after receiving a series of occasionally bizarre emails from his press people to what I thought was a fairly simple question about Bush’s work before he became a Republican presidential candidate.</p>

Leading House Republicans declared their opposition Wednesday to allowing debt-ridden Puerto Rico access to Chapter 9 bankruptcy protections, raising new uncertainty about how the island can emerge from its financial crisis. A statement from House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia said members of his committee share a concern that “to provide Puerto Rico’s municipalities access to chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy Code would not, by itself, solve Puerto Rico’s difficulties, which are associated with underlying, structural economic problems.” …

Puerto Rico has two very powerful allies in its debt drama: Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. Both 2016 presidential candidates support giving Puerto Rico the same legal bankruptcy rights that states have. Puerto Rico's governor has been lobbying hard for the change to help deal with the commonwealth's $73 billion debt. There's a bill in Congress to give Puerto Rico what it wants, but it has no co-sponsors. That's why Bush and Clinton's backing could be key. "I think that Puerto Rico ought to be treated as other states are treated as it relates to restructuring," Bush said during a...

Greek voters’ decisive rejection of international creditors’ bailout terms adds to the pressure on foreign exporters already worried about getting paid for imports into Greece during the country’s capital controls. Some exporters have reduced the flow to Greece or insisted on payments upfront, while others keep up the imports into the country despite the increasing chance they won’t get paid. European pharmaceutical companies, for instance, are owed more than €1 billion for drugs and other goods already imported. snip Greece produces just 63% of the pork and 13% of the beef consumed in the country, according to government data. The...

Almost every option facing debt-drenched Greece is bad, but there is only one that will end this Greek tragedy for good. Let Greece go bankrupt. Then let this once-rich nation, hit the restart button to rebuild its economy. What I’m suggesting for Greece is what might be called the Detroit option. Put Greece under receivership and let these new authorities figure out how to manage the debt and decide who will take a haircut and how big. Pensioners, bondholders, welfare recipients, government workers, the International Monetary Fund, all will have to settle for less — maybe a lot less. It’s...

Remember this?Well congratulations! You are now! Except for one thing: after a few non-lethal union concessions, Detroit got the State to bail them and their pensions out. Greece just said “no” to the EU’s demand for concessions, so…this should be fun.Hard to believe isn’t it? The country that founded democracy has discovered how to destroy it. Well actually, Alexis de Tocqueville identified that mechanism a couple of centuries ago: “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.” And we’ve been implementing it incrementally ever since:  Detroit’s giant tire...

The debt crisis in Puerto Rico could potentially cost financial institutions in the United States tens of billions of dollars in losses. This week, Puerto Rico Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla publicly announced that Puerto Rico’s 73 billion dollar debt is “not payable,” and a special adviser that was recently appointed to help straighten out the island’s finances said that it is “insolvent” and will totally run out of cash very shortly. At this point, Puerto Rico’s debt is approximately 15 times larger than the per capita median debt of the 50 U.S. states. Yes, the Greek debt crisis is larger,...

Its economy has been shrinking for years, its debts have been piling up for even longer, and its government has finally admitted that even brutal tax hikes and spending cuts wouldn't be enough for it to pay back everything it owes. I'm talking, of course, about Puerto Rico. Its governor, Alejandro García Padilla, admitted to the New York Times on Sunday that the island is going to have restructure its $72 billion in debt that is "not payable." Now, if it sounds like you've been hearing some variation of this story for years now, it's because you have—just about Greece....

Greek banks are preparing contingency plans for a possible “bail-in” of depositors amid fears the country is heading for financial collapse, bankers and businesspeople with knowledge of the measures said on Friday. The plans, which call for a “haircut” of at least 30 per cent on deposits above €8,000, sketch out an increasingly likely scenario for at least one bank, the sources said.

... The German chancellor’s disapproval helped end the political careers of former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and Greek leader George Papandreou. After burning through whatever goodwill he had with Merkel’s lawmakers and the German public, the current Greek premier could be next.... “We are watching the end of the political career of Alexis Tsipras,” Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at Peterson Institute in Washington, said in a Bloomberg Radio interview. “Mr. Tsipras can continue his career on T-shirts for students, replacing Che Guevara.”... Refusing to play ball with Germany didn’t turn out well for Berlusconi, whose premiership had survived...

In the short term, the world runs on words; in the long term, the world runs on numbers. It is as though the Muses came to an agreement: In the here and now, mankind is subject to rhetoric, but mathematics gets the final say. In Athens, in San Juan, in Detroit, in Sacramento, in Springfield, and, soon enough, in Washington, Mathematics is arousing herself from her torpor, and she is cranky as hell. The long term is here. Greece has defaulted on its sovereign debt, and its banks have been shut down. Television viewers accustomed to watching a few odd...

Puerto Rico is bankrupt. The key problem is that while municipalities can declare bankruptcy, states and territories cannot. President Barack Obama recognizes the problem. “No federal bailout for Puerto Rico” is the White House’s position. Instead, he urges Congress to pass a bill allowing Puerto Rico to declare bankruptcy. The Associated Press gives details: “The White House threw cold water Monday on the notion of bailing out Puerto Rico from its financial crisis, instead urging Congress to consider changing the law so the island can declare bankruptcy. “On the heels of a dismal economic report, Puerto Rico’s governor has warned...

Greece joins Somalia, Sudan and Zimbabwe on the latest to be in debt to the International Monetary Fund. As Athenians rallied underneath thunderclouds to show their support for keeping Greece in the eurozone of single currency nations, their broke government defaulted on a $2.2-billion payment to the International Monetary Fund. At midnight on Tuesday, Greece joined Sudan, Somalia and Zimbabwe as countries in arrears to the IMF. Also at midnight, the bailout assistance package that began in February 2012 formally expired, leaving Greece without access to any emergency finances. In Washington, the IMF acknowledged that Greece had failed to meet...

The governor of Puerto Rico has admitted that it can't keep paying down the over $72 billion worth of public debt obligations. As a result, it finds itself in a uniquely awful position. It can't go into bankruptcy according to its own laws, so now it has to deal exclusively with its creditors to restructure its debt. That means it has to deal with Wall Street. "I think the surprise was that it happened this quickly," said Brian Kelly, CEO of Connecticut-based fund Brian Kelly Capital. "We thought it would take 6 months to a year... the solution is a...