The repo folks have come to the land of Disney World, “The Happiest Place on Earth,” with an unhappy message for America: Business—their business—is looking up.
It’s a recent Thursday morning in Orlando, just up the road from the Magic Kingdom, and a few hundred conventioneers are arriving for the North American Repossessors Summit. Here, license plate readers and tow trucks mix with sun and golf into a heady cocktail for these uneasy economic times. With more Americans struggling to pay their bills, the $1.7 billion industry for repossessing such assets as cars, trucks and boats is gearing up for a boom. The effects are expected to reverberate through countless ordinary lives and onto Wall Street, where car loans are packaged into bonds and sold to investors.
