A Record for Corporate Bankruptcies?   How is that possible? It
all goes back to a four-fold increase in corporate debt that
built up over the last decade. PricewaterhouseCoopers forecasts
that 11,000 companies will file for Chapter 11 protection in
2002, up from a record 10,442 in 2001. BusinessWeek Investment
Banking Editor Emily Thornton recently spoke with Carter Pate, a
managing partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, about the firm's
grim prediction. Here are edited excerpts from their
conversation:  Q: Could there really be a record number of
companies filing for bankruptcy this year when the economy seems
headed for recovery?  A: Bankruptcy is a lagging indicator. What
we're seeing is the continuing economic fallout that comes after
a period of 9 or 10 years of unbridled growth. In a normal
economy, without the home-run stretch that we had, many of the
companies you've seen file [for Chapter 11] last year and this
year would have been falling off the edge long ago. But [with] a
strong economy, many of the