Detroit, Michigan nears Chapter 9 Bankruptcy [UPDATED]

Originally posted by DontTreadOnMe
reply to post by HabiruThorstein

 

Actually, I am hoping the State of Michigan just absorbs the City Pensions in that case.
Seems bizarre to punish that part that was fiscally responsible.

I certainly share the sentiment, and it would be nice if they could. My guess is that it will be pretty minimal, but politically they'll almost certainly have to make at least a small contraction. If for no other reason than to show the current employees who are going to be taking pay cuts that everyone is taking a hit and the cuts are shared.

And whoever it was above trying to blame Detroit's collapse on oil, or comparing today's Detroit with todays Pittsburgh (even higher up on the thread) a couple facts: Number one: Today's MoTown is a dying city, Pittsburgh was ranked as the best large city to live in for the whole US last poll I saw which was I think for 2011 but may have been 2012. They lost the steel mills, went through a rough patch, and moved on bringing in other businesses. It's currently a thriving city with low unemployment numbers.

As far as blaming what happened in Detroit on oil, not a chance, no way. And just to correct, Saudi Arabia does indeed sell oil in dollars, in fact they are the ones who made it so that EVERY nation in the world has to buy oil using US dollars-and no other currency is accpeted. It's one reason we've been able to run our debt so high, every nation on the planet needs dollars to buy oil since 1973. The de jure gold standard may have ended but immediately after that the dollar became de facto oil backed. And since the decline can be traced from 1967 onwards, no, oil has nothing to do with Detroit's collapse that any other US city didn't also have to deal with, mismanagement of the city is to blame. The loss of manufacturing jobs has hit all over the US, other cities adapted, Detroit did not, and therein lies the problem. I could go on further but I doubt ATS wants me to author 'History of Detroit 1967 to Present' on their website.

IMO Chapter 9 will happen, but with State Receivership attached.

Corrupt, ignorant, narcissistic trash run the City of Detroit and have since the Coleman Young years.

Detroit can be a great city, but only if the trash is removed and a whole new mindset takes place. There are qualified and good, in the city of Detroit, but they are not the ones running the show currently, so this is actually a needed action for the city to get back on track.

Didn't we give these guys billions of dollars recently (some from tax payers and some stolen from bond holders)? What did they do with all that money?

The federal government will go the same way unless there's enough honest republicans who refuse to raise the debt ceiling... Not much chance of that! At least some of the public sector workers who caused this will lose their jobs and pensions, but I don't think it will cause their peers in other cities to control their insane greed.

According to my friend who grew up there, nothing but good could come from everyone leaving the area to become a ghost town. Bulldozers leveling the place could be a blessing.

reply to post by supermouse

If you mean the City Detroit and the Federal Government....no.....the current administration seems to be avoiding the situation.

Originally posted by HabiruThorstein
I could go on further but I doubt ATS wants me to author 'History of Detroit 1967 to Present' on their website.

Some of us are extremely interested in places such as Detroit and some have already found that information so i say Why not?

It's about the politicians and leading men of Detroit who (among others) brought that beautiful city to it's knees. I'm not even American but it really hurts looking at pictures and reading about the city without hope. It's a warzone forgodsake with a difference that people rebuild real warzone cities within 10 years max.

Sometimes i get an eerie feeling that is the future of all cities everywhere on earth.

Didn't we give these guys billions of dollars recently (some from tax payers and some stolen from bond holders)? What did they do with all that money?

The city, no. I don't believe so. GM, yes. When the markets collapsed around 2008, GM could not borrow as they normally would. The only lender available at the time was the Federal Government.

I know in this country we have a tendency to frown upon "bailouts", and rightly so. I would caution this line of thinking, however. I can assure you that Russia, China, India and most any other nation on earth would have done the same for GM had they been in our shoes. I know we have a streak of independence and want companies to stand on their own two feet, but the utter failure of GM would be a national security nightmare.

According to my friend who grew up there, nothing but good could come from everyone leaving the area to become a ghost town. Bulldozers leveling the place could be a blessing.

This is the kind of attitude that is short-sighted, and frightening. There are a lot of good people in metro-Detroit, and plenty of not so good people as well. The issues are deep-rooted and historical. We have a major racial divide, massive unemployment, skyrocketing crime and violence in the city, and record numbers of homeless. A lot of the devastation is a direct result of a spiritual, cultural, and economic decay that has gripped the city for decades now.

Detroit's idea of economic development is to build casinos and strip clubs. There are no real serious efforts to bring legitimate business to the city, aside from sports-related complexes. We need to bring more manufacturing, and high-tech businesses to the city. Only a handful of companies - Compuware, Quicken Loans, and a few others - have made the commitment to the city by moving their HQ into the Downtown area. Nonetheless, the population continues to dwindle in the city, and despair and hopelessness is the pervading thought pattern. The city itself is bankrupt due to years of failure to address all of these issues head on.

The Federal Government has long ignored Detroit's woes. I don't believe that Bush or Obama have spent any significant time here in the city itself to see the devastation to the infrastructure, the people, and the community as a whole. It's simply not a priority. You will rarely see or hear from the administration on national news about our city and its challenges.

If we spent our hard earned fortune on rebuilding Detroit instead of rebuilding Afghanistan and Iraq, Detroit might have a fighting chance. If we can rebuild foreign countries, why can't we rebuild our own cities?

Sometimes i get an eerie feeling that is the future of all cities everywhere on earth.

It is. Detroit's woes are now being felt throughout the Midwest as a whole, and the entire nation for that matter. When Detroit is hurting, it hurts the whole country.

I live in the Metro Detroit Area and grew up IN the city of Detroit till 22. The City is so far gone that you just have to almost start all over. The average house is probably from the 1960's/early 70's, there isn't much to renovate as they haven't been well maintained. There are whole neighborhoods where there are literally one or two houses standing in a normal city block. Detroit at it's heyday had 1.3M residents, now it's lucky to have 700K, the census numbers are bogus. The City needs to shrink and consolidate neighborhoods and turn large parts of the City back to nature. The infrastructure of the those barely populated neighborhoods are too costly to maintain for a handful of residents.

The City government still thinks, acts and spends like it is a City of over a million citizens, they haven't adapted, let alone accepted the reality that is Detroit today. Even now, the City Clowncil acts like there isn't really any crisis and that "they", meaning the State, won't let Detroit go bankrupt. The City Council live in a daily state of denial, been doing that for decades now.

But for the City to turn around it's fortunes it needs to start with more jobs and education. The Detroit Public School system has failed the City and it's residents miserably. It graduates just 38% of it's highschoolers and is the second worst city in the country for urban youth. With out education reform, the City of Detroit has no hope of improving.

The motor city presents a dismal high school graduation rate of 38% according to America's Promise Alliance; it too is struggling with the same educational challenges as Atlanta, Baltimore, and Cleveland. According to the most recent executive summary of juvenile statistics published by the Michigan Department of Human Services, Detroit's Wayne County is at the top of the list of counties identified for targeted intervention due to a high juvenile crime arrest rate over a period of 5 years, and high prevalence of arrest in the most recent year of documented juvenile justice data. Statewide, African-American youth comprise almost 50% of arrested juveniles. Detroit is also known to be one of the most violent cities, rated as the nation's murder capital by Forbes. The FBI reports 17,428 instances of violent crime out of a population of 905,783, in their most recent published data on U.S. Crime. Michigan Higher Education Land Policy Consortium reports that Detroit has an infant mortality rate of 15.4 per 1000 live births. The city's unemployment rate stands at a staggering 17.3%. For Detroit's zipcode of 48201, more than $20,000,000 in Recovery Act funds has been received, with only 67 jobs having been created.

abcnews.go.com... st-cities-urban-youth/story?id=9083935&page=2#.UMUE2YPAeQI

It will take next to a miracle for the City of Detroit to rescue itself. Even with outside intervention, it's a real long shot that anything can be done in time to save the City. You almost have to blow it up and start over, it's that far gone. Most of the City isn't worth reinvesting in. They need to focus on the areas that are still viable and just work from there building out again, that means very large tracts of the City proper just have turn back into woodlands.

Originally posted by CookieMonster09


This is the kind of attitude that is short-sighted, and frightening. There are a lot of good people in metro-Detroit, and plenty of not so good people as well. The issues are deep-rooted and historical. We have a major racial divide, massive unemployment, skyrocketing crime and violence in the city, and record numbers of homeless. A lot of the devastation is a direct result of a spiritual, cultural, and economic decay that has gripped the city for decades now.

Detroit's idea of economic development is to build casinos and strip clubs. There are no real serious efforts to bring legitimate business to the city, aside from sports-related complexes. We need to bring more manufacturing, and high-tech businesses to the city. Only a handful of companies - Compuware, Quicken Loans, and a few others - have made the commitment to the city by moving their HQ into the Downtown area. Nonetheless, the population continues to dwindle in the city, and despair and hopelessness is the pervading thought pattern. The city itself is bankrupt due to years of failure to address all of these issues head on.

Cookiemonster, you make it sound like Detroit's wounds aren't self inflicted, they are. Detroit is to blame for the problems it has, no one else is even a close second. Corruption is rampant everywhere in the City, this I have experienced first hand. You talk of bringing more manufacturing and high-tech jobs, but the city's public schools have been putting out horribly educated new employees from at least the 1980's, even farther back than that. You must have noticed that the Compuware's and Quicken's that have moved back into the city had to recruit people to work and live in Detroit. The only reason for that is that the City didn't have a ready made workforce for those businesses to hire. Till the City turns around it's Education System, nothing else matters in the long term. It all start's with that. Detroit is paying the price for at least three generations of abysmal school systems. You can't have a thriving and growing city when you only graduate 38% of your High School students and, according to a recent report have 47% of your Adult citizens are functionally illiterate.

Originally posted by CookieMonster09


The city, no. I don't believe so. GM, yes. When the markets collapsed around 2008, GM could not borrow as they normally would. The only lender available at the time was the Federal Government.

I know in this country we have a tendency to frown upon "bailouts", and rightly so. I would caution this line of thinking, however. I can assure you that Russia, China, India and most any other nation on earth would have done the same for GM had they been in our shoes. I know we have a streak of independence and want companies to stand on their own two feet, but the utter failure of GM would be a national security nightmare.

If we spent our hard earned fortune on rebuilding Detroit instead of rebuilding Afghanistan and Iraq, Detroit might have a fighting chance. If we can rebuild foreign countries, why can't we rebuild our own cities?

But it's the same people, the city, GM, the car industry. Where did all our money go? There was even that program to destroy the environment by junking perfectly good cars. Where's the money?

Strange that those countries you mentioned that would have done the same are communist. Are you trying to tell us something?

What hard-earned fortune? We're in massive debt.

The idea is to help the people of detroit by bulldozing the city (after they've left). The point my friend was trying to make was that he was happier and more successful out of that place.

reply to post by supermouse


No, it isn't the same people.

I'm sure there are/were some UAW GM employees living in the City.

But, most of the time earning enough to move out of the sinking city is the goal. If you were making union wages, would you live in a home on street where crime is rampant, streetlights often don't work, police and fire response is abysmal and there's no where to shop?

There are few factories left in Detroit.
So, if you work in the suburbs and live in Detroit, you must pay an income tax to a City that does a horrible job of maintaining itself....basically getting nothing for those tax dollars.

I don't see the connection between Detroit and bailing GM

It all start's with that. Detroit is paying the price for at least three generations of abysmal school systems. You can't have a thriving and growing city when you only graduate 38% of your High School students and, according to a recent report have 47% of your Adult citizens are functionally illiterate.

Agreed. Some of the wounds are self-inflicted by the leadership in Detroit.

But for most working class families, they are the beneficiaries of a broken system, and forced to live in a culture filled with drugs and violent gangs, with few economic prospects, massive unemployment, and a high probability of homelessness.

Yes, the city of Detroit's leaders are responsible. So is the state and federal government. But the average Joe is the one who has been hurt by these corrupt leaders. Not to mention all of metro-Detroit and the state of Michigan as a whole.

But it's the same people, the city, GM, the car industry. Where did all our money go? There was even that program to destroy the environment by junking perfectly good cars. Where's the money?

The City of Detroit and General Motors are not one and the same. The city never received any federal funds, as far as I am aware, to rebuild the infrastructure of the city. At least not as part of any "federal bailout".

GM continues to struggle, and is now essentially a tax-payer owned entity. As far as where those funds went, you can take a close look at GM's annual report and judge for yourself whether GM is being managed in a fiscally responsible manner or not. As GM works through this recession - assuming they stay in business - taxpayer funds would be repaid, just as when Chrysler took federal funds decades ago and repaid the federal government. The jury is still out regarding GM.

Strange that those countries you mentioned that would have done the same are communist. Are you trying to tell us something?

Non-communist countries would have done the same thing. Canada, the UK, New Zealand - most any country, whether pro-capitalist or not - would have come to the aid of GM in the same shoes.

What hard-earned fortune? We're in massive debt.

We're in debt in part because we spent billions on rebuilding the infrastructure of foreign countries instead of our own. Plus we have spent massive amounts of dollars in fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Speaking of which, didn't Wolfowitz in the lead-up to the Iraq war state that there would be oil reparations from Iraq once we won the war, that would help defray the costs of the war? Funny how that idea went by the wayside, and now we're stuck with the bill while our cities are falling apart.

The idea is to help the people of detroit by bulldozing the city (after they've left). The point my friend was trying to make was that he was happier and more successful out of that place.

Yes, almost anyone would be happy to leave Detroit if given the chance. That's the problem. The city is a disaster.

The goal is how do you rebuild the city? How do you attract families to move to Detroit? Only after you significantly reduce crime, bring back good-paying jobs, rebuild infrastructure, and fix the education system do you have a fighting chance.

How do you attract entrepreneurs and businesses back to the city? And immigrants from all around the world? Detroit used to be a melting pot of French, English, Jewish, German, Polish, African-American, Armenian, Hispanic - any ethnicity under the sun.

reply to post by DontTreadOnMe


I don't know what they're doing now, or can do, but why not an sutomaker revival in Detroit? Give some over-the top incentives for auto vehicle, parts, etc. Even non-related manufacturing. Create a manufacturing boom mecca...but make sure it's enough to lure enough, and create enough decent-enough jobs to spur a property-tax base. Considering homes can be had for about $1,500, it wouldn't be too. Difficult to boost local and state revenues.

Ever wonder if they've been taking all the unsold new trucks and cars over the years and throwing them in the oceans to hide the fact they can't sell them?

Wouldn't that be the conspiracy of all conspiracies? There's still 2007 new model motorcycles, atvs, and jetskis sitting in warehouses and dealers showrooms that have gone unsold. Don't think they'll ever sell those either.

Originally posted by Exitt

Originally posted by HabiruThorstein
I could go on further but I doubt ATS wants me to author 'History of Detroit 1967 to Present' on their website.

Some of us are extremely interested in places such as Detroit and some have already found that information so i say Why not?

It's about the politicians and leading men of Detroit who (among others) brought that beautiful city to it's knees. I'm not even American but it really hurts looking at pictures and reading about the city without hope. It's a warzone forgodsake with a difference that people rebuild real warzone cities within 10 years max.

Sometimes i get an eerie feeling that is the future of all cities everywhere on earth.

From the early 20th century til the 50's it was referred to as the Paris of North America. There is so much absolutely brilliant architecture just rotting away that anyone with a sense of connection to human civilization would consider it a complete travesty. At it's peak in the early 50's the Detroit-Windsor area was an example of how great an international metropolis could potentially be. Now it's just a sad reminder of how badly things can go astray in the space of a generation.

Maybe I'll get some more gumption to write that history in detail at some point, in the meantime if you have anything specifically you'd like to ask I'll open my comments wall finally and you can just ask away

Originally posted by CookieMonster09
Yes, the city of Detroit's leaders are responsible. So is the state and federal government. But the average Joe is the one who has been hurt by these corrupt leaders. Not to mention all of metro-Detroit and the state of Michigan as a whole.

When the State started mentioning an Emergency Manager for Detroit, it was the City Clowncil who put up the biggest fight against it. The same City Council who brought Detroit to it's knee's in the first place started talking about how it could take care of it's own problems just fine, it didn't need intervention from outside. The citizens of Detroit hired/elected these buffoons, they got what they deserved. There are one or two members of that Council who have a clue. Detroit has a paranoia problem. It needs help from others, but can't admit that itself is the major problem, it always blames "others" for it's problems. The political leadership in Detroit need to grow up and stand on their own.

This is the catch 22. Detroit can't seem to elect the leaders that will solve their problems, do you let Democracy run it's course or do you intervene before the elected officials destroy the whole thing? It would be nice if the citizens of Detroit could elect competent officials, but that plainly seems to have not worked.

It's looking more and more that Detroit is not going for the bankruptcy option....and no matter what happens it deficit won't be totally gone for years.
The brakes need to be engaged to stop the money bleed.

Financial Advisory Board supports emergency financial manager for Detroit

The Financial Advisory Board for the city of Detroit has unanimously voted to support starting the clock on deciding whether an emergency financial manager is needed in the city.

The board met Monday and said the growing deficit in the city is alarming. It is expected to be $326 million by the end of the year, and it is expected to balloon to $376 million in 2013.

reply to post by VaterOrlaag


They are either slandering Detroit as a whole or they bring up Kwame Kilpatrick. The real truth behind the hatred is a screwed up popular belief about Detroit and its people. Robocop mentality. Detroit has gone through some tough times and its getting ready to get worse thanks to that nutcase of a Governor getting ready to turn Michigan into Mississippi with the "Right to Work" laws. Detroit can survive the storms and the hatred. Because that is what we do at the end of the day. We do it our way.

And Detroit looks like a heaven compared to Flint...lol

reply to post by ltheghost

What do you see Detroit doing to correct the situation it faces.....starting with its finances?

Leaving out Kwame and the Governor.
Neither of which lives in Detroit.

reply to post by DontTreadOnMe


Jobs and Education..... Detroit needs to give some really really generous tax breaks to businesses who setup shop in Detroit and mainly employ Detroit citizens. You have to have people making money if the City is ever going to turn around. I'll take the increased employment numbers over any loss of tax base from industry.

Schools, I don't know how, but the Detroit Public School system has to improve and dramatically improve at that. I think this is the much harder of the tasks to do. Speaking with the teachers I know who have worked in the DPS, it sounds like an impossible task. There are so many things wrong, it's hard to even pinpoint where you can get the biggest bang for the buck when it comes to the educational system of Detroit.