November 9, 2007 (LPAC)-–As the Creditreform Association of Germany documents in its latest survey on private households' indebtedness, insolvencies are up 50 percent in Germany, against the past year. All in all, 150,000 new cases have been added to the list, mostly Hartz IV recipients that cannot afford living any longer, but also, increasingly, home-owners who because of a lost job cannot pay their mortgage any longer, nor even the regular expenses of keeping a home. The same trend goes for Germans that have become dependent on one or more badly payed mini jobs, to compensate for a full time job that isn't available.

As the Creditreform Association also said, 7.3 million Germans, that is almost 10 percent, have been thrown into a situation which does not give them the income they need to stay alive. With the continuing rise in consumer goods, most people won't be able to afford a shovel to bury their dead.