In May the EU and the IMF bailed out Greece to the tune of €110bn and announced a €750bn shield to protect the euro against a cascade of sovereign insolvencies around the Mediterranean.
It has also emerged that UK taxpayers have been hit with a bill of as much as £50m in compensatory payments to workers laid off incorrectly during more than 20 company insolvencies overseen by Deloitte in the past six years.
Most notably, the number of personal insolvencies surged by almost 60% in 2006.
What finally saved the city was anxiety about the fallout, in the form of possible bank insolvencies and borrowing costs for the rest of America, had it been unable to pay its debts.New York's federal bail-out was punitive, however.
Corporate insolvencies have increased sharply but from low levels.
There were 54 insolvencies in England's top four divisions between 1992 and 2011, according to Deloitte, a consultancy.In this section Boxed in Rover the regulator Losing their shirts My little crony They just keep on keeping on Bad or rubbish?
And the number of corporate insolvencies is expected to increase in Japan this year by only 15%, despite the depth of its recession, compared with more than 30% in western Europe and 40% in America.
A third concern is that insolvencies involving cross-border organisations are often chaotic, as different countries have different rules and no one knows which ones have priority.
Smelling sweet Startup fever Going under Clan Douglas ReprintsOne reason for the rise in insolvencies after 2000 was that it became easier to file for an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA), which allows debtors to pay money back over a period of time.
If the Lords reverse the Court of Appeal's ruling, turning some supposedly fixed charges into floating ones, the state will move up the queue in insolvencies predating the change in the law.It is right that the case may go to the Lords.
(As one Briefing has it, "In many macroeconomic models, therefore, insolvencies cannot occur".
