Thanks to a greedy banking industry, this is the American dream of the new millennium.

The streets are empty. Trash rustles down the road past rusted barbecues, abandoned furniture, sagging homes and gardens turned to weed.

This is Shaker Heights, a suburb of Cleveland and a town ravaged by the subprime mortgage crisis roiling the United States.

Faded “for sale” signs sit in front of deserted houses. The residents are gone, either in search of new jobs after the factories shut down, or in shame after being evicted for missing their mortgage payments.

A red, white and blue American flag flies over windows and doors which have been boarded up to keep the drug dealers away.

Thieves have stripped many homes of the plumbing, the doors, the windows, the aluminum siding.

I’m sure Shaker Heights is not alone. You can bank that there are many different “ghost towns” all over the country thanks to the shady deals, and the “relaxed” rules that allowed all this to happen in the first place. Sure, people should have read through their documents more carefully, but the truth of the matter is many people didn’t catch that “adjustable” part because the mortgage companies did everything they could to make sure they didn’t see it.

There are three abandoned houses in our area. No one has said anything, but it’s been months since we’ve seen the owners and the for sale signs look like they have been there since before the houses were built. It’s a shame, because all three families were nice people, who had good jobs, but just couldn’t afford getting screwed by the bank time and time again.

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