Unless you work in a small or medium-sized business, CIT might not be a familiar brand. But as a major lender to manufacturing and retail businesses, CIT’s filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy over the weekend could hit close to home. This morning on MMR Mitchell Hartmann reported on the impact of the filing — the 5th largest in U.S. history.
What we want to know now is how CIT’s troubles could affect you. Do you own or run a small or medium-sized business? Do you work in retail or manufacturing? Have you done business with CIT in the past? Click here to tell us how you anticipate CIT’s bankruptcy might affect you, your business, or your community.
I’m pulled in opposite directions about the entire issue of bankruptcy. On the one hand, I do not like to see either individuals or companies pulled under by events they probably cannot control such as this recession, though those culpable of causing it often have not been called upon to face the repercussions of their, at best, poor judgments and, at worst, unmitigated and too frequently unrepentant arrogant greed.
What has sometimes bothered me about bankruptcy is the whole recurring pattern in our culture of people’s escaping the consequences of their own choices and, while doing so, hurting others who may have put their trust in them in doing business with them. All of the righteous rhetoric about a “free” capitalism gets wearisome if there is a lack of trust and accountability transpiring very often and very widely. If the system becomes a charade of what honest business should be and adopts the Barnum & Baily paradigm then I’m not sure it will or should survive.