Discharged Debts That Won’t Die
BusinessWeek.com has just posted an interesting investigative report, titled “Prisoners of Debt,” by reporters Robert Berner and Brian Grow. The piece focuses on how big lenders and credit card companies keep squeezing money out of consumers whose debts have been discharged in bankruptcy, and on the selling and buying of those discharged debts. “In a financial version of Night of the Living Dead,” the article recounts, “debts forgiven by bankruptcy courts are springing back to life to haunt consumers. Fueling these miniature horror stories is an unlikely market in which seemingly extinguished debts are avidly bought and sold.” Discharged debts continue to show up consumers’ credit reports and, in many cases, consumers end up paying the discharged debts anyway, just to make the creditors’ go away. So much for bankruptcy as a fresh start.
