Bankruptcies surge on Long Island

The number of personal bankruptcies on Long Island is way up in 2008, another sign that mounting mortgage defaults and the climbing prices of necessities like food and energy are taking a toll on locals.

Long Island saw 2,154 bankruptcy filings in the first four months of the year, up 9.8 percent

Most of those were Chapter 7 bankruptcies, which wipe out all debts and essentially give the filer a fresh start. Chapter 7 filings totaled 1,456 from January to April, up 15.4 percent compared to the prior September-to-December period.

It seems many of these distressed consumers are being pushed over the edge financially by slow job and wage growth, and the burst housing bubble. Also thousands of Long Islanders whose home prices have declined are finding they have little or no equity left in their homes to draw on.

"When the economy is in recession, or even in subpar growth, all the borrowings that people made in the good times come back to haunt them," said Pearl Kamer, chief economist at the Long Island Association.