The Flip Side Of The American Dream

(CBS)  Dean Reynolds is a correspondent for CBS News.

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I received a call last evening to quickly do a brief story for The Early Show about a man and his foreclosed home. (It aired this morning.)

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The man's home is in Plano, Il., a good 90-minute drive from where I was, but I was glad I went as it turned out. James Yaccino met me at the door of his house -- a resigned expression on his face.

"It is what it is," he told me when I asked how he's bearing up. His five-bedroom home in a sprawling subdivision is no longer his. A bank notice whipped in the wind from his front door when I crossed the threshold.

What got me about Yaccino was his resiliency. Divorced, he told me there was a part of him that was happy about this turn of events because he had met a new lady friend and things were looking up socially. But he has a long way to go before things really get better.

"You know, I'm almost poverty level right now," he said. "I never thought that would ever come."

Yaccino has packed up just about everything he owns and will put it in a public storage unit.

"I'm basically homeless now," he said as he scanned his cluttered living room. He told me he will probably live for a while at his business, a collision repair shop. But that business is failing and it will be only a matter of time until he is literally out on the street.

His house has five bedrooms and a garage, a fireplace, and a nice yard on a quiet street. The house cost him more than $300,000 when he bought it, but he was simply unable to keep up the payments when business dried up. He wasn't one of those who went for the dubious mortgage either. He had a standard 30-year plan. It didn't matter. No income, no payments, no payments, no house.

Now it's being sold for around $150,000.

"The realtor who was here that was selling my house (for the bank), says that `it's not just Lakewood Springs, or Plano, or whatever else. It's every Lakewood Springs all over the country.'"

His home is located in Kendall County, one of the fastest growing in the country, with a population that has doubled since 2000. But the recession changed everything about this subdivision and many others. Kendall County is now the foreclosure capital of Illinois. One out of every 26 households here received a foreclosure notice during the first six months of this year. I thought about what that must mean to all those families who moved to places like Plano whose great distance from downtown Chicago translated to affordability -- at least once.

I thought about all those kids pulled from schools. And all that incomprehensible uncertainty that must darken their young lives, to say nothing of their parents.'

After I'd done my work at his house, James and I shook hands and said goodbye. I wished him well, got in my car and drove home.











By Dean Reynolds:
Special to CBS News.com

[sjc_1]

We need to ALL say that we are fed up with corporate dominance and we are not going to take this any more. Everyone should be willing to fight to take our country back from this evil. Corporations operate in the U.S. with the permission of the people and if they will not play fair, we will make them play fair.

[clancy49]

I can't help but wish the Obama presidency really was about socialism and toppling the wealth of the elite 1% to share with the working poor and once again making this the best nation in the world with a powerful middle class. Unfortunately all I see is the same old same old with Obama becoming one of the wealthy elite. His income was $176,000 before he ran as a presidential candidate. Going into the WH it jumped to 2.5 million. God knows what it is now and what it will be when he leaves office. Don't jump me for being an Obama hater or a Republican. This just about reality and the corruption of all of DC. And I am sick and tired of reading that it was all Bush's fault. This has been going on since LBJ and has continued through one administration to another that were both Democratic and Republican. I am sick and tired of give Obama a chance. Wake up America, nothing has changed. It is getting worse. We the people have the power to change and we must use that power.

[sjc_1]

The American nightmare, you lose your house, you lose your job, you lose your health care, your kid gets sick and you declare bankruptcy trying to pay the medical bills.

[babooph]

The new am dream -having your own lobbyist....

[noloyalisti]

This is mission accomplished for the Bush Crime Family neocons and their corporate masters. The big corporations only want us to have enough so they can keep stealing from us.

Bush and the Republicans destroyed our economy by putting the failed and disastrous Reaganonomics on steroids. Way to go corporations!!!!!!!!!

[ubrew12]

Since 1979, the wealthiest 1% of Americans have tripled their share of the nations income, while the poorest 90% of Americans have seen their share of the nations income reduced by 20%. This means that in order for the wealthiest 1% of Americans to see their incomes triple, the AVERAGE working American makes $10,000. a year LESS than he/she made in 1979 (adjusted for inflation/deflation). The wealthiest 1% put their money into hedge funds, banks, financial derivatives and other globalized instruments. These were NOT real investments in hardware, they were 'bubble investments', building a gambling house of cards that came crashing down a year ago. And when these investment instruments failed, lost nearly ALL their value, what did the richest 1% do? They went hat in hand to Congress, who have paid them AT LEAST $1 TRILLION in welfare, taken from ordinary taxpayers. NOW Congress is considering a nationalized sales tax. Sales taxes are horribly regressive, they tax the poor MUCH more than the rich, as the poor must spend money on basic necessities.

The term 'privatize the profits, socialize the losses' comes to mind in considering the wealthiest 1% of Americans, where they put their money, and what has happened recently to those investments and to the nation that is now underwriting their 'value', and to the poor working SAPS who will be overtaxed to PAY that debt.