The global economic boom that has been witnessed over the last twenty years is due largely to the growth of credit that has been available in ways that could not be imagined before the last quarter of the last century. This boom comes at a price, whereby the world, other than the USA where problems peaked a few years ago, is suffering an all-time high level of financial failures amongst consumer debtors and small businesses. At the 1997 INSOL World Congress in New Orleans, INSOL International included for the first time a meeting on consumer debt problems. This programme drew far more attention than we anticipated when planning the Congress ñ it was literally standing room only. The subject was again on the programmes of the INSOL Pacific Conference in Auckland, New Zealand and the INSOL Conference of the Americas in Bermuda, both in 1999, again with outstandingly high levels of interest. INSOLís Consumer Debt Committee grew out of this enthusiasm to tackle a problem of growing worldwide importance. It was tasked with undertaking a survey of insolvency regimes for individuals throughout the world. In the process, the committee obtained input from professionals serving a wide variety of roles in the insolvency system including regulators, judges, practitioners and academics. The object of the research was not just to gather information from countries with developed consumer insolvency laws, but also to learn more about the issues affecting consumer debtors and their creditors in jurisdictions where laws are not so well established. Our long-term goal is to provide a resource for countries developing or reforming laws and systems that attempt to deal with the problems ! Uwagi: Oprawa nieco zabrudzona. Strony lekko zakurzone.