Bernie Sanders
In reply to the discussion: Elizabeth Warren SLAMS Hillary Clinton With Most Damaging Evidence To Date [View all]bhikkhu
(10,728 posts)Searching "US bankruptcy law history", oddly enough, came up with various write-ups with no mention of anything happening after 1978. But searching "GW bush bankruptcy" found an article where he signed the bill into law in 2005, then led to other good informative pieces.
I don't know if the law has had a dire impact on people in general, though it probably made the great recession worse for many. It did, apparently, backfire for the credit card issuers who were the primary lobbyists. Believing that they would see fewer credit defaults they lent like drunken sailors, only to see defaults skyrocket within a few years. I remember the days when it was so easy and normal to get a stack of easy-qualifying credit card offers, and for people to regularly run up debts that way. Looking at the numbers, credit card debt peaked in 2008, and has declined steadily since then to the lowest level in 15 years or so (?w=1024&h=576). Not the kind of growth model the industry was looking for, and they have to make up for it by charging higher fees and worse penalties, which only makes them more disliked and distrusted than they already were.
(of course, student debt seems to be the real story, and the real problem nowadays)