Bankruptcies down in L.A. as they rise elsewhere. (Up Front).Steadily rising home values and a solid job base helped Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. buck a nationwide trend that saw a record number of Americans file for bankruptcy protection last year. Consumer bankruptcies in the Central District of California, which includes L.A. County, fell by 4.8 percent in 2002, even as they rose by 6 percent nationally, to 1.5 million, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. a report from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. There were 81,702 consumer bankruptcy filings in the Central District of California in 2002, about 97 percent of all filings for the local court. The decline followed a 9 percent increase in 2001 and marked the first time in five years that the L.A. region defied nationwide trends in bankruptcy filings. Real estate made the difference. "Home prices have been rising fairly dramatically, while interest rates have been falling," said Nancy Sidhu, senior economist with the L.A. Economic Development Corp. "People who are worried or see themselves in trouble have been refinancing and paying down those debts. In other parts of the nation, this continues to be true, but in many parts, prices have not been rising as fast as they have here." In the Southern District of New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of , which includes New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. , there were 14,811 consumer bankruptcies in 2002, up 8.3 percent from a year earlier. The survey also found that bankruptcy filings in the Northern District of California were 20,139 in 2002, up 8.1 percent from 2001. Howard Roth, chief economist The Chief Economist is a single position job class having primary responsibility for the development, coordination, and production of economic and financial analysis. It is distinguished from the other economist positions by the broader scope of responsibility encompassing the for California's Department of Finance, said the higher rate of bankruptcies in Northern California Northern California, sometimes referred to as NorCal, is the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. The region contains the San Francisco Bay Area, the state capital, Sacramento; as well as the substantial natural beauty of the redwood forests, the northern could be attributed to the decline of the technology industry. As jobless levels have jumped, younger people who do not own homes and have few assets are more likely to file for bankruptcy, he said. Some bankruptcy lawyers do not anticipate an increase in L.A. any time soon. "The consumer filings in L.A. County dropped so substantially that out of necessity it forced me to reinvent my practice and focus on civil litigation An action brought in court to enforce a particular right. The act or process of bringing a lawsuit in and of itself; a judicial contest; any dispute. When a person begins a civil lawsuit, the person enters into a process called litigation. ," said Baruch Cohen cohen or kohen (Hebrew: “priest”) Jewish priest descended from Zadok (a descendant of Aaron), priest at the First Temple of Jerusalem. The biblical priesthood was hereditary and male. , a local bankruptcy attorney who handled only consumer bankruptcies two years ago. Today, bankruptcies make up only 10 percent of his work. According to the Administrative Office survey, the increase in filings started to tail off nationally at the end of 2002, as total filings fell by 1.5 percent in the last three months of the year compared to the previous quarter. |
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