Rueters reports that big dollar bankruptcies are at a five-year high. That seems like big news, all right, but what’s more surprising to me is to look at those previous highs:

A total of seven U.S. companies with more than a billion dollars in assets have filed for bankruptcy protection so far this year.
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The last year in the previous bankruptcy wave was 2003, when there were 15 billion-dollar bankruptcies filed. The number of billion-dollar bankruptcies peaked in 2001 when there were 25, according to BankruptcyData.com.