Metro Field Services
  • ANOKA
  • CARVER
  • DAKOTA
  • HENNEPIN
  • RAMSEY
  • SCOTT
  • WASHINGTON
  • & OUTSIDE METRO 7
"To Serve and Collect"
Metro Field Services
PO Box 48131
Minneapolis, Mn. 55448
Fun Facts about Debt
           Did You Know…

  •        In medieval Italy, when a businessman did not pay his debts, it
    was the practice to destroy his trading bench. From the Italian word
    for broken bench, "banca rotta," comes the term bankruptcy.   
    (Source: BankruptcyData.com.)

  •       April 4th, 1800 - The nation's first bankruptcy act is passed "to
    establish a uniform system of bankruptcy in the United States." The
    law, repealed in December 1803, contained 64 sections, applied only
    to merchants, and did not permit voluntary bankruptcy.
 (Source: This Day in Business History, Raymond L. Francis)


  •        HOW CHARGING IS ADDING UP
 Data on bank-type cards:      1994                    2004
                     Charges            $480.3 billion      $1.1 trillion
          Debt outstanding     $279.3 billion      $644.8 billion
  (Source: Federal Reserve)

  •        Nearly $100 billion in child support debt is owed to custodial
    parents and their children.
 (Source: Office of Child Support Enforcement, Child Support Report, March 2005.)

  •        The number of bounced checks in 2003 was about 200 million,
    for a value of about $151.2 billion. This equates to about 548,000
    checks, for a value of $414 million, bounced every day.
 (Source: The 2004 Federal Reserve Payments Study, December 2004)

  •        While the number of overall bankruptcies was 3.6 times higher
    in 2001 than in 1980, the number of health-related bankruptcies
    increased 23-fold over the same period, which suggests that high
    medical bills were a major contributor to the growth in the number of
    individuals seeking federal bankruptcy protection
 (Source: Physicians for a National Health Program, Feb. 2nd, 2005)

  •        The amount of liabilities among all US Banks, Credit Unions, &
    other savings institutions totals 8.22 TRILLION dollars.  On the
    other hand, they have 9.2 TRILLION dollars in assets.  
    (Source: The 2006 Federal Reserve: Assets and Liabilities of Commercial Banks in the       
    United States, April 14th, 2006)

  •        The largest corporate bankruptcy in history was WorldCom, Inc.
    with pre-banko assets of $103,914,000,000.00.  It was filed on
    07/21/2002.  Nothing before or after even comes close.
 (Source: BankruptcyData.com/New Generation Research, Inc. Boston, MA)

  •        Bankruptcies filed in the twelve-month period ending December
    31, 2005, totaled 2,078,415, up from the 1,597,462 petitions filed in the
    12-month period ending December 31, 2004
 (Source: Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, March 24th, 2006)
Timothy J Lunde... 763-498-1287
North and West Metro
Fax: 763-792-1037

Shayne A Tschida...651-747-7762
South and East Metro
Fax: 763-792-1037
Out of State: 800-770-1003