First Half Stats Look Grim

America's first six months of 2010 economic stats, that is.  Housing is in the crapper, jobs are starting to slip again and personal bankruptcy filings are on the rise as unemployment benefits are running out leaving hundreds of thousands in limbo.

Bankruptcy filings surged 14% during the first half of 2010, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute. Filings totaled 770,117 through June, compared to 675,351 during the same period last year.

"Years of rising consumer debt and low savings rates, combined with the housing and unemployment crisis, are causing bankruptcy levels not seen since the 2005," said Samuel Gerdano, executive director of the institute, in a press release.

In 2005 Congress amended the Bankruptcy Code, making it harder for Americans to file and sparking a rush to file by October of 2005, when the amendments kicked in. In 2005, bankruptcy filings totaled more than 2 million.

By comparison, Gerdano expects there will be more than 1.6 million new bankruptcy filings by the end of 2010.

The institute also said that bankruptcies totaled 126,270 in June, a jump of 8.5% from the same month in 2009, when they totaled 116,365.

Expect that to keep rising, folks.  Families are starting to fall between the cracks now, and we're told this has to happen to save the rest of us, that we can't afford to help them anymore, that this will motivate them to take minimum wage jobs that will somehow make ends meet.

It's odd that our response to the biggest banks on Earth wrecking our economy is to blame the working-class people who got laid off.  They must be lazy, after all.  Real Americans I guess work three 40 hour minimum wage jobs.