American Morning
High-end repo men snag planes, yachts
By Bob Ruff and Carol Costello, CNN
(CNN) – Count the rich among the victims of the Great Recession. Just ask Ken Cage, who repossesses very expensive toys that the rich can no longer afford. Business, HIS business, is booming.
“We sold 12 boats and airplanes in a day,” he told us. His biggest repo? A nearly new $14 million Gulfstream jet taken from a real estate developer who fell behind in his payments. Cage often sells the repossessions himself, taking a small cut of each sale and giving the rest back to the banks.
Cage’s Orlando-based International Recovery & Remarketing Group (IRG) grabbed around 1,000 big-ticket items last year. Cage’s partner is Randy Craft, a former professional wrestler who provides the “muscle” in case a repo goes wrong. We caught up with them as they were going through the final run-through for their next target, a $700,000 Cessna Citation jet.
With most repos, says Cage, the challenge is where to go looking. Many owners move and hide their planes as soon as the bank says they are repossessing. Cage, who is part Sherlock Holmes and part James Bond, has contacts at most airports throughout Florida.
Sign-wearing man goes from pinkslip to paycheck
(CNN) – For more than a year, Paul Nawrocki, a laid-off toy executive, was desperate to get hired. He walked the streets of Manhattan wearing a sandwich board and handing out resumes.
It finally paid off and not a moment too soon. A week after his unemployment benefits ran out, Paul found a job. Our Richard Roth met up with him again to hear his inspirational story.
Detroit plans to save city by demolishing vacant neighborhoods
Editor's Note: Hit hard by the recession, the once-proud city of Detroit is now a shell of its former self – literally. Parts of Detroit resemble a war zone and the mayor has a radical plan to save the decaying motor city, by shrinking it. Our Jim Acosta has the report.
By Jim Acosta, CNN
(CNN) – This was one of those stories that had me and my producer agonizing over the material left on the cutting room floor. Mostly images that we couldn’t squeeze into our story.
Take our drive with Data Driven Detroit’s Kurt Metzger. He’s the guy who led a team of land surveyors around the city measuring Detroit’s urban blight block by block.
During the drive, we saw recently built Habitat for Humanity homes surrounded by vacant houses. We saw an almost brand new playground in another failed neighborhood. The fence around the pristine play set had fallen and the grass was overgrown. No kids in sight. Our cameras didn’t exaggerate Detroit’s decay. If anything, they couldn’t capture it all.
The old Wayne County office building, a historic landmark, in downtown Detroit has fallen on hard times. The county moved its workers out of the building. Now, only a fraction of the structure is used as a preschool. The rest of the building stands vacant.
School districts warn of deep budget cuts
(CNN) – The battered economy is devastating school districts nationwide. Faced with shrinking budgets, many schools say they have no choice but to lay off teachers.
In fact, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan warns that we are on the brink of an "education catastrophe." The latest example of our schools in crisis can be seen in Illinois, where yesterday thousands rallied at the state capitol to protest deep cuts.
Dan Montgomery, an English teacher in Skokie, Illinois was at yesterday's rally. He joined us on Thursday's American Morning, along with Lindsey Burke, a former teacher and education policy analyst.
Jobless rate nearly double for African-Americans
(CNN) – If you're looking for work in this economy there are plenty of experienced, educated professionals out there pounding the pavement with you. And if you happen to be black, your odds of securing a job just got slimmer.
According to a new National Urban League report, the unemployment rate for African-Americans is nearly twice as high as it is for whites in this country.
Judi Redmen hasn't had a full time job in three years, despite having three degrees and sending out ten resumes a day. She joined us on Wednesday's American Morning, along with Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League
Would you move 1000 miles for your job?
By Bob Ruff, CNN
(CNN) – What would you do if your company closed its doors, but offered you the same job 1000 miles away?
In December 2008, in the depths of the recession, GM worker Steve Kerl faced that same question. Just 8 years from retirement, his GM assembly plant in Janesville, Wisconsin was shut down. 1,933 workers were out of work.
“What are we going to do?” was Kerl’s first reaction. “Are we going to have our health care? How are we going to come out? We didn’t even know if you were going to have a job.”
Most of the Janesville plant workers took buyouts. But 545 of them were fortunate enough to be offered jobs at other GM plants. The catch? The plants are hundreds of miles from Wisconsin.
What would you do?
Kerl took a job putting fenders on GM SUV’s in Arlington, Texas. It’s hard work. At the end of his 10-hour shifts he goes back to bunk with two other GM workers in a three-bedroom apartment near the plant. Home is 1000 miles away.
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