To make them easier to find, the Project on Student Debt has provided a new page on its Web site devoted to the program. To find it, go to www.ibrinfo.org and click on "How Do I Get Them?" This page has links to applications and phone numbers for major student lenders including the U.S. Department of Education's direct loan program.
This site has lots of other information on the program, which is designed to help borrowers who are unemployed, have very low incomes or very large college debts. It caps payments based on the borrower's adjusted gross income and family size. Any debt remaining is wiped out after 25 years - or after 10 years for workers in public or nonprofit jobs.
Students who graduated this summer - into one of the worst job markets ever - and had to begin repaying their student loans in November should check to see if they are eligible.
"It's disappointing that some of the top lenders aren't doing more to promote the program. It's a good default-prevention mechanism," says Edie Irons, spokeswoman for the Project on Student Debt.
Finaid.org also has information on the program at www.finaid.org/loans/ibr.phtml.
Speaking of jobs: Did the economy actually create payroll jobs in November? Economist Ed Yardeni thinks the answer is yes.
On Friday, the government reported that the economy shed 11,000 jobs in November, the smallest loss since the recession began in December 2007.
But when those numbers are revised, as they always are, Yardeni predicts they will show a net gain in jobs, perhaps as high as 25,000.
Yardeni says that revisions "tend to be toward the downside during recessions and to the upside during recoveries. This time, upside revisions started back in March and totaled 285,000 through October, with only one downward revision of 57,000 during July. This follows 14 consecutive months of downward revisions totaling 1.37 million."
He notes that October's job tally was revised up by 79,000 to a decline of 111,000. September was revised up twice by a total of 124,000 to a decline of 139,000."
He warns that "revisions are pretty volatile and hard to predict," but thinks the job market "has turned a corner. I'm more impressed by the plunge in initial unemployment claims. That's reconfirming that companies are slowing down their firing. Now what matters is what happens on the hiring side."
