U.S. companies are failing to make debt payments at twice the pace they were a year ago and what’s worse, nearly eight months into 2016, there are already more defaults this year then there were in all of 2015, Fortune reported today. The data comes from a new report from Standard & Poors. In the past week, the number of U.S. companies that have failed to make debt payments rose by four to 71 — more than double the 34 U.S. companies that had defaulted at this time in 2015. None of the new defaults were big companies. Around the world, the number of corporate defaults reached 104 in 2016. That’s the fastest pace of defaults since the financial crisis. At least for now, the good news is that, in the immortal words of Ben Bernanke, the default crisis appears to be contained. Nonetheless, there have been some notable defaults this year outside of energy, among them New York supermarket chain Fairway, which filed for bankruptcy, and mall staple Claire’s Stores, which restructured its debt.
