Ron runs a bio-recovery company that cleans houses after murders or suicides. With the storm of foreclosures, his business has seen a 300% increase in business over the past few months. 'Usually when we see a suicide, there's been a catalyst that provoked it. Most of the time, it is a financial situation. We go in and we see piles of unpaid bills.'

'They gave me a nice deal. 100% financing, 0% down payment and I went for it.' Sandra Rolon is one of the hundreds of thousands who bought a house she could't afford. She used to live in a friend's basement with her baby and the temptation of easy credit was too strong: 'I told them I can't afford this mortgage...but they made it so easy for me, it was like that nice red apple. I had to have it.' Now she feels conned: 'It's a dog-eat-dog world.' Millions like Sandra were led to believe that they could create wealth. Easy credit was like a drug.

Inside an abandoned property, peeling wallpaper, discarded toys, signs that a family left their home in a rush. Cleveland is the planet's foreclosure capital. Jim is a county treasurer. Driving through the city, he points to dilapidated houses: 'Most of them will have to be demolished. They are financially and physically condemned.' In recent months, entire neighbourhoods have been turned into ghost towns.

Who is responsible? How exactly did it happen? Banks made borrowing ridiculously easy in order to stack up the mortgages on their books. Banks were aware that most borrowers wouldn't be able to pay them back. In this topsy turvy world loans turned into assets. The banks sold them to offshore companies who transformed them into investment packages, which were eventually on-sold again through Wall Street. 'Every one was happy, everyone was making money.' This made huge profit for the investment houses but they may as well have been selling air.

Karen and Michael Lukas are victims of banks' raids on defaulting borrowers: 'They stole my house. They say they own it but they stole it.' The Lucas' face eviction because they couldn't keep up with the repayment of their refurbishment loan. Karen brandishes the eviction papers: 'This is not justice! They're wrong, they're gangsters!' An embarrassed sheriff oversees the procedure. A typical day will take him through 10 evictions: 'It's tough... I've had to evict elderly people who didn't understand the situation. You feel bad but you still have to do the job.'

Stockbrokers claim that no one expected the sheer magnitude of the crisis. Deals should have been regulated and monitored. Risks should have been evaluated. Yet no one bothered as long as the machine was spitting out billions of dollars. 'This is not a recession, it's a financial scam.'

ERT / Small Planet / Exandas Documentary Series
Directed by Yorgos Avgeropoulos