The North Carolina Bankruptcy Information Blog

We’ve talked a lot about the recent record-breaking Black Friday, but it was our nation’s President who instead promoted shopping on the second annual “Small Business Saturday,” a day (November 26) devoted to spurring growth and hiring in some of our country’s most hard-hit business sectors.

According to Reuters, “Promoting “Small Business Saturday”, the second annual event to help Main Street merchants in a tough U.S. economy, [President] Obama visited a local bookstore with Malia, 13, and Sasha, 10, in the diverse, upscale Du Pont Circle area of downtown Washington.

“This is Small Business Saturday so we’re out here supporting small businesses,” said Obama, standing next to Malia who was hugging an armful of books to her chest.…

Threats of a double-dip recession — a recession, followed by a short-lived recovery, followed by another recession — permeated the headlines in 2011, at a time when there were plenty of signs that this second coming of an economic downturn had begun. Stagnate hiring, a paltry job market and plummeting real estate prices, as well as low consumer confidence, all made another financial reckoning feel less like a fiction and more like a reality.

But did this double-dip economic climate put the freeze on one of the country’s most popular purveyors of subzero sweets?

Such seems to be the case with the recent bankruptcy of Dippin’ Dots.…

Chicago’s own Giordano’s, one of the most popular purveyors of stuffed pizza, is filing for bankruptcy protection.

It’s not unusual to hear of any business filing for bankruptcy in these tough economic times. During the Recession, less consumer demand and fewer customer orders often caused a rise in inventory, losses in sales margins, and high debts with no solution other than going out of business or restructuring via a Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

But for a culinary institution like Giordano’s, the story was different. As The Chicago Times put it, “It wasn’t the pizza, it was the real estate.”

It turns out that throughout a five-year period during which many other restaurants lost business, served fewer customers, and eventually were forced to close shop, Giordano’s had actually thrived.…

While details of super-sized corporate failures, like GM and Chrysler, are being splashed across front pages of newspapers and websites, grabbing our attention and garnering an inordinate amount of debate, the reality is that the vast majority of commercial bankruptcies are filed by entrepreneurs and small-business owners. The first five months of this year have shown a 52% increase in the total number of commercial bankruptcy filings. On average, during the first six months of 2009, some 350 commercial enterprises file for bankruptcy daily — an increase of 240% from 2006, the first year after the bankruptcy law was changed.

Today’s economic landscape has proven to be especially toxic to small business owners.…

It’s been a trying week for defamed NFL quarterback Michael Vick. He has been officially released from the team that drafted him, the Atlanta Falcons, and on Tuesday, a United States bankruptcy judge gave him a deadline of July 2 to submit a revised Chapter 11 plan. Vick has been ordered to repay a multitude of creditors that he owed prior to his confinement in federal prison for backing a multi-state dog fighting ring.

Chapter 11 is a common form of bankruptcy that allows an individual court protection in conjunction with an organized payment plan or financial restructuring.

In April of this year, US Judge Frank Santoro rejected Vick’s first reorganization plan, calling it unrealistic and not nearly ambitious enough, as it called for Vick to keep several homes and other valuable assets.…