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In a potential sign of a winded economy, Colorado experienced the sharpest increase in business failures of any state. Business failures in Colorado jumped more than 50 percent last year, according to The Dun and Bradstreet Corp., a New Jersey-based business information provider. Some 2,243 businesses failedChanel Watches in the state in 1996, up from 1,481 in 1995. Business failures in the Rocky Mountain region rose 13.2 percent, from 4,741 to 5,368. In contrast, they remained flat nationally, rising only 1 percent to 71,811. Business starts continue to outpace failures in Colorado, but the 1.5-to-1 ratio of starts to failures is down from 2-to-1 in 1995, according to Dun and Bradstreet. Nationally, there were about 2.4 business starts for every failure. Colorado represented two out of every five business failures in a region covering Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Nevada. The report seems to confirm recent reports that Colorado's economy isn't growing as quickly as it was two or three years ago. But with unemployment rates below 4 percent in much of the state, companies continuing to move in and home prices still rising, there's no sign of an imminent economic crash. A failure, as defined by Dun andwatches Bradstreet, occurs when a business leaves behind creditors. If a business simply closes its doors with no obligation, then it isn't counted. Dun and Bradstreet measures business starts as the first time a vendor or supplier requests a credit check on a business. U.S. Bankruptcy Court Trustee Barbara Shangraw, who is based in Denver, said all bankruptcy filings increased about 20 percent in the region last year, but most were personal and not business-related. "The Chapter 11s are pretty stable," she said. Nationally, bankruptcies hit a record l.2 million last year as many consumers overloaded with debt simply walked away. That has worried many observers. "We had record-high bankruptcies during a record economy. What is going to happen when things start to change?" asked Richard Federman, a credit consultant with Consumer Banking Strategies. Other states coming close to Colorado's 51.5 percent rise in failures were Illinois, 50.8 percent, Alaska, 46.8 percent and Hawaii, 46.7 percent. wholesale mp3Colorado's failures jumped most rapidly in the agriculture sector, a 180 percent rise; finance, insurance and real estate, a 144 percent increase; transportation and public utilities, a 137 percent increase; and services, a 126 percent increase. Denver experienced only a 15.7 percent increase in the number of business failures, but the value of assets represented in those failures shot up dramatically, from $110 million in 1995 to $1.27 billion last year.