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ABI applauds President Joe Biden for signing into law yesterday the amended S.3823, the “Bankruptcy Threshold Adjustment and Technical Corrections Act.” The bill was introduced by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) to raise the debt limit back to $7.5 million for small businesses electing to file for bankruptcy under subchapter V of chapter 11. Consistent with the recommendations of ABI’s Commission on Consumer Bankruptcy, the measure also raises the debt limit for individual chapter 13 filings to $2.75 million and removes the distinction between secured and unsecured debt for that calculation. The bill passed the Senate on April 7 and the House of Representatives on June 7. All provisions of the law will sunset two years from enactment, on June 21, 2024. Due to priorities and procedural issues, the Senate was not able to address S.3823 prior to the March 27 sunset of the $7.5 million eligibility limit for small businesses electing to file for bankruptcy under subchapter V of chapter 11. The debt-eligibility limit returned to the original $2,725,625 threshold on March 28 that had been established under the “Small Business Reorganization Act of 2019” (SBRA). In addition to providing a two-year extension of the subchapter V debt limit back to $7.5 million, the law also covers any chapter 11 case eligible under the reinstated subchapter V debt limit that was pending or filed after the March 27 sunset.

President Joe Biden signed legislation yesterday meant to lower the cost of shipping goods across oceans, a move the White House says will help ease logistical costs for retailers that have remained high since the start of the coronavirus pandemic and helped fuel record inflation, the Associated Press reported. The Ocean Shipping Reform Act passed unanimously by the Senate via voice vote in March after winning bipartisan House support. It empowers the Federal Maritime Commission to investigate late fees charged by carriers while prohibiting ocean carriers and marine terminals from refusing to fill available cargo space. The president also has stressed that a concentration of corporate shipping power in the hands of a few large companies has fed higher shipping costs in ways that hurt businesses and exacerbate problems with inflation. “These carriers made $190 billion in profit in 2021, seven times higher than the year before,” Biden said.

Legislation aimed at curbing the power of the container shipping industry, which has seen prices increase tenfold during the pandemic, breezed through the House on Monday and could head to the Oval Office for a signature as soon as this week, The Hill reported. The administration is hoping the law, which is designed to slash the bargaining power of container shipping companies and their industry alliances, will address a critical bottleneck in global supply chains — an issue economists widely believe is a key factor driving inflation. But experts caution that supply chain fixes for inflation can be elusive and that tinkering with the logistical channels that deliver bargain manufactured goods based on cheap labor from Asia can have unexpected consequences. Supply chains over the last few decades have been pared down to minimize costs associated with storage, inventory and labor. These “just-in-time” or “lean” supply chains are cost-efficient specifically because they don’t bother developing and maintaining the infrastructure that can accommodate big swings in demand.

The American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI) applauds the House of Representatives passage (392-21) yesterday of the S.3823, the “Bankruptcy Threshold Adjustment and Technical Corrections Act.” The Senate on April 7 had passed the legislation introduced by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) to raise the debt limit back to $7.5 million for small businesses electing to file for bankruptcy under subchapter V of chapter 11. Consistent with the recommendations of ABI’s Commission on Consumer Bankruptcy, the substitute also raises the debt limit for individual chapter 13 filings to $2.75 million and removes the distinction between secured and unsecured debt for that calculation. All provisions of the legislation will sunset two years after enactment. The legislation will now be sent to President Biden to be signed into law.

A highly anticipated Senate proposal to bring the cryptocurrency industry under federal oversight would deliver a win for the sector by empowering its preferred regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), over the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Washington Post reported. The bill’s sponsors, Sens. Cynthia M. Lummis (R-Wyo.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), are touting it as the first serious effort to apply comprehensive regulation to the crypto industry, which has minted a new class of billionaires and promised to reinvent financial services while also spawning scams and investor wipeouts that have raised regulators’ alarms. But by giving primary responsibility for crypto oversight to the CFTC, the relatively small agency tasked with regulating a swath of financial markets, from grain futures to more complex products, the bill — set for introduction Tuesday — sidelines the SEC, whose chair, Gary Gensler, has taken an aggressive posture toward crypto interests. Gensler argues that most digital assets in the roughly $1.2 trillion market qualify as securities, similar to stock in publicly-traded companies, giving his agency the responsibility to police them and their issuers. The bill from Lummis and Gillibrand rejects that claim, asserting instead that “most digital assets are much more similar to commodities than securities,” a joint news release from the senators’ offices said. The CFTC already regulates futures contracts for bitcoin and ethereum, the two most popular cryptocurrencies. But the new proposal gives the agency broad new power by handing it oversight of the crypto spot market as well — and envisions that market including a wide array of digital coins. The bill would create a process for crypto trading platforms such as Coinbase to register with the CFTC.