You can listen here to a podcast by Sam Gerdano interviewing Jason Kilborn about the World Bank's Report on the Treatment of the Insolvency on Natural Persons. You can read the World Bank's news release about the Report here. Some time ago I posted here about recommendations for modification of India's current insolvency regime for businesses. To the best of my knowledge, nothing has come of the recommendations.
By contrast, the World Bank's Report (and it's only that, a report, no recommendations or even a list of "best practices") focuses on debt relief for "natural" persons, that is, human beings. The ease of a bankruptcy discharge in the United States remains an outlier among the world's insolvency systems but the world is moving our way (led by, of all places, France and Columbia).
Notwithstanding the moralistic cast under which insolvency is frequently considered in other countries, more nations are coming to appreciate that the inability of many debtors to repay their debts reflects a financial, not a moral, lapse. (And for those who might be interested, I present some reflections on the morality of creditor forbearance here.) Which is not to say that other nations are rushing headlong to duplicate the Bankruptcy Code's Chapter 7 but only that more are considering some means by which to give their citizens a fresh start.
By contrast, the World Bank's Report (and it's only that, a report, no recommendations or even a list of "best practices") focuses on debt relief for "natural" persons, that is, human beings. The ease of a bankruptcy discharge in the United States remains an outlier among the world's insolvency systems but the world is moving our way (led by, of all places, France and Columbia).
Notwithstanding the moralistic cast under which insolvency is frequently considered in other countries, more nations are coming to appreciate that the inability of many debtors to repay their debts reflects a financial, not a moral, lapse. (And for those who might be interested, I present some reflections on the morality of creditor forbearance here.) Which is not to say that other nations are rushing headlong to duplicate the Bankruptcy Code's Chapter 7 but only that more are considering some means by which to give their citizens a fresh start.
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