Ya wanna know how bad it is? Part One

The Big Three - or ²/₃ of them, anyway - aren't the only ones dealing with bankruptcy issues.

According to Automated Access to Court Electronic Records, an Oklahoma City bankruptcy data company whose data is cited by McClatchy, nearly 58,000 commercial bankruptcies were filed this year through November. That not only is the largest single-year total since the change in bankruptcy law in 2005, it is 35% more than the total for all of 2007.

Things look even worse for next year, when business filings are likely to increase 40 to 50 percent, said Dan North, chief economist at Euler Hermes ACI, an Owings Mill, Md., firm that insures more than $150 billion in U.S. trade transactions each year.

North expects a wave of retail bankruptcies in the first quarter of 2009, as struggling businesses run out of gas after hanging on for the holiday shopping season. ...

The uncertainty shows no sign of abating.

The Distressed Company Alert, a weekly newsletter about troubled public companies, typically adds five to 10 companies a week to its list.

These days, it's adding 18 to 24 a week.

According to a graph acompanying the article, business bankruptcies have increased in every single quarter since the first quarter of 2006. Filings in the third quarter of 2008 were nearly triple what they were in the first quarter of 2006.