Even the dead must repay their student loans

ProPublica.org, one of the finest journalism sites on the web, continues to pump out great stories day after day.

Now, they're offering an absurd and outrageous story about a father who must pay back his son's college student loans, though his son died and never finished his education.

Francisco Reynoso may now face financial ruin paying off these private loans for an education that his son will never use. As this story spins out of control, we learn that Wall Street is in the picture, profiting from the loan that is ruining Reynoso.

Here's a ProPublica summary:

"In the extreme case of a student passing away, his or her federal student loans are forgiven without a problem. Private lenders, however, are not as lenient when it comes to cancelling debt, as Francisco Reynoso discovered when his son passed away in September 2008.

"ProPublica's Marian Wang reports that Reynoso, who co-signed his son's student loans, is now 'suffering a Kafkaesque ordeal in which he's hounded to repay loans that funded an education his son will never get to use -- loans that he has little hope of ever paying off.' ... What's more, Reynoso has not been able to determine very basic information about his son's loans, such as how much he owes or even what company holds his loan.

"... Wang goes on to explain how Reynoso 's loans were sold, resold and bundled into complex Wall Street investments, much like home mortgages before the financial crash; how the hunt for answers about the loans led her to one Swiss bank; and how Sen. Dick Durbin is leading an effort to make private student loans dischargeable through bankruptcy."

You can read the full story  here.