Serial bankruptcies, six figures

Edmund Andrews, who has been an economics reporter with The New York Times for several years, has written a book entitled BUSTED: Life Inside the Great Mortgage Meltdown.

Here is the amazon entry for the book.

From what I understand -- and I admit upfront I haven't read the book, so of course I stand open to correction -- Andrews treats his and his wife's experiences as a homeowning couple as a microcosm of the broader meltdown, and although he acknowledges that they were imprudent in some financial decisions, the general premise of the book is that this is anyone's story -- it could have been you, etc.

Commendable research by Megan McArdle at The Atlantic indicates that they aren't a very good microcosm for everyone. She could have done a routine review, but chose instead to do some digging. Nothing dramatic -- no meetings in a dark garage -- just some study of publicly available records of bankruptcy filings and the like. But very revealing.

The serial bankruptcies of an individual making six-figure incomes -- with the second bankruptcy coming almost as soon as lawfully possible -- is hardly an "everyman" type of situation. And treating it as a microcosm of our broader economic difficulties is not the path to clarity on the subject of the latter.