# Debt's Grip: What Consumer Bankruptcy Reveals About Financial Risk in America

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Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/consumer-finance-monitor-71869/debt-s-grip-what-consumer-bankruptcy-reveals-about-financial-risk-in-america.md
Podcast: [Consumer Finance Monitor](https://stenobird.com/podcast/consumer-finance-monitor-71869)
Published: 2026-02-05T15:45:00+00:00
Episode link: https://consumerfinancemonitor.libsyn.com/debts-grip-what-consumer-bankruptcy-reveals-about-financial-risk-in-america
Audio file: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/consumerfinancemonitor/CFM0904.mp3?dest-id=785513
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/consumer-finance-monitor-71869/episodes/debt-s-grip-what-consumer-bankruptcy-reveals-about-financial-risk-in-america
Duration seconds: 3038

## Resource

On this episode of the Ballard Spahr Consumer Finance Monitor Podcast, we examine consumer debt and bankruptcy through the lens of Debt's Grip: Risk and Consumer Bankruptcy (University of California Press, 2025), by Pamela Foohey, Robert M. Lawless, and Deborah Thorne. Based on decades of research from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, the nation's most comprehensive study of bankruptcy filers, Debt's Grip goes beyond aggregate data to document the lived experience of financial distress. The book shows how illness, job loss, aging, family structure, debt collection, and racial inequality converge to push households toward bankruptcy and what that reveals about how financial risk is allocated in the U.S. economy. Rather than treating bankruptcy as a personal failure, the authors demonstrate how policy choices over time shifted economic risk from institutions to individuals, leaving many households one unexpected expense away from crisis. Those risks fall unevenly, with Black families, single mothers, and older Americans disproportionately affected. The Authors Pamela Foohey , Allen Post Professor of Law, University of Georgia School of Law, is a principal investigator with the Consumer Bankruptcy Project and a leading scholar on bankruptcy and financial distress. Robert M. Lawless , Max L. Rowe Professor of Law, University of Illinois College of Law, is a nationally recognized empirical scholar of bankruptcy and consumer finance and a principal investigator of the Consumer Bankruptcy Project. Deborah Thorne , Professor of Sociology at the University of Idaho, brings a critical sociological lens, foregrounding the voices and experiences of bankruptcy filers. She also is a principal investigator of the Consumer Bankruptcy Project. Podcast Highlights In the episode, we disc…

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