Detroit bankruptcy: American dream demise

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Henry Ford correctly claimed that global investment banking was largely run by a few outlandishly rich Jewish families. These plutocrats, he believed, were a threat to the general prosperity his new model of automobile factory had unleashed.

After 9/11, the US spent trillions of dollars waging wars whose only conceivable purpose was to protect the Rothschild power base in Israel, and to enslave the US under a tidal wave of debt.

The 9/11 wars destroyed the US economy. Before 9/11, there was essentially no deficit. Since 9/11, the US has sunk into near bankruptcy. Today, the official US national debt is almost 17 trillion dollars. It is increasing at a rate of almost two-and-one-half billion dollars per day. Each man, woman and child in America personally owes more than $50,000 to the Rothschilds and their international banking friends - and, what's worse, they also owe exponentially-increasing interest on that debt.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/07/20 ... am-demise/

Seriously? Something else to think about...

Cherry-picking at its finest.



The short-lived Clinton-Era balanced budget was preceded by decades of systematic deficits. The year you are looking for is not 2001, but 1961 - When Ike left office.

Your predictable anti-semitic shenanigans are now becoming so amateurish that the label "trolling" would be offensive to trolls everywhere.

Detroit, the city, is a poverty reservation. It's not much of an indicator of US financial health. The city and the auto industry decoupled long ago. There are two auto factories and one headquarters left and few thousand workers down from a quarter of a million. The auto industry started packing up back in the 1950s and moving beyond the city limits.

It's a very specific situation. The city is basically a poverty reservation surrounded by wealth and the remaining 700,000 overwhelmingly poor people can't support a city infrastructure designed for 2 million people. By the next census it will be below 600,000.

Maybe Detroit was just badly managed? The city should have scaled down the budget when the tax income went down. And paying pensions as they go along was bad financial planning as well. The retirement funds should always be outside of the organisation itself, so that when that horrible day comes when it all goes to s**t the retirees still get paid.
And I don't understand how people can let a city fall apart in this way. Years before the bankruptcy Detroit already looked like a warzone. WTF? There are buildings from the ancient Romans that are in better shape.

Yes, there is additional irony in that Detroit produced the B-24 liberator. The most produced heavy bomber in history. Leveled a lot of targets in world war 2. But not so much in Japan.

There certainly was mismanagement, but also forces on a scale that are difficult to deal with. It might be the largest boom town in US history. The population massively spiked and then massively collapsed. Centered around the arrival and departure of the auto industry. Generations of politicians imagined they could hold at x. But x didnt hold. All exacerbated by terrible race relations.

They have reduced staff as the population dwindled but you've still got the property, street lights, garbage and sewer to maintain. An area too large for that many people. Plus all of the legacy pensions of a larger city. Now it's at a triage level. They imagine shutting down parts of the city to keep other parts afloat. That's a difficult thing for a mayor to tell people and hope to get re-elected. You live in a no garbage collection, no street lights area now. Best of luck.

Is Detroit obsolete? Is the solution to its problems to destroy the city completely then forget it even existed? Is Detroit a unique and specific example or is its demise destined to be repeated all over the US?

1945: Before W. Edwards Deming's philosophies were rejected by Detroit's "Big Three Auto".

2012: After W. Edwards Deming's philosophies were embraced by the Japanese.

Enough said?

Detroit, the city, starting shrinking in the 1950s, just a few decades after the boom. And when the automakers were still showing strong profits it was already in a steep decline. Two different "Detroits"

Missteps by the auto industry didnt help the region, but the city was already going down. Urban flight happened everywhere and Detroit just took it harder and longer. Chicago is also down 1 million people from peak, like Detroit, but Chicago is a larger and more diversified city with all classes still represented and a strong tax base.

The city will reach an equilibrium at some point and adjust to life as a poorer, smaller city relieved of the burden of much of it's debt and obligations thanks to bankruptcy. There is a lot of downhill left for them. The problem will continue for other cities with underfunded pensions, deep debts, and shrinking tax bases. And even cities that appear to be doing well can suddenly find themselves burdened by yesterday's costs when the economy shifts and people leave for greener pastures. Like the housing bubble an interesting question is; Who lent Detroit all that money? There is talk of them getting 10 cents on the dollar in return. lol.



Henry Ford is an interesting example. You associate him with Detroit. He's buried there. A stadium bears his name. But Ford Motor hasnt built a car in the city of Detroit for over 100 years.

Scaling down the budget just accelerates flight as essentially people are told to pay higher taxes with lower levels of service.

Unfunded liabilities to public workers are going to plague this country for decades to come. In a lot of these cities the tax bases are shrinking, services are being cut, and infrastructure is crumbling. What is the solution to this? You can't enslave future generations, you can't bleed a stone. Cities like LA, NYC, Chicago, etc. have diversified enough economies where they might be able to recover but that isn't the case in a lot of places. I like the term Simon used to describe Detroit, 'poverty reservation' because that's exactly what Detroit is. The people that still live there, live there because they can't leave. I don't believe Detroit has a way back, why would anybody ever move there? I think a good portion of it should be razed with the populace encouraged to move somewhere more economically friendly. Hopefully these issues with liabilities can be dealt with in other cities so they can avoid the fate that has befell Detroit.

Back in the heyday of the big 3, anything that Deming, Crosby, or Juran would have had to say would have been dismissed as Communism.
"The old way is the ONLY way!" they'd shout.
And so it goes......

Presumably, most of the buildings will have been stripped of resources like copper by now? Perhaps the best option might be for the city to sell of the buildings at scrap value to whoever wants the task of stripping out all the steel and breaking up the concrete for aggregate. I don't know how much could be raised through this, or whether their planning system would allow this (but they'll have to just overrule them in that case). Save whichever buildings are needed, and turn the rest into parks and gardens. Perhaps the money raised by literally taking apart the city might be enough to settle with their debtors. Ultimately though, the people of Detroit have to take responsibility for their own future.

Detroit was a model city for socialistic policies.

It drove away every person who didn't want to live under that system can could move away. The rest enjoyed sucking from the government teet until there was no more milk to give.

People in the northern peninsula apparently joke about cutting Detroit off and floating it into the lake. I do wonder, if we just gave it over to Canada and made everyone in Detroit get Canadian citizenship, give it over to Windsor as a new province, just how much of a turnaround it might make.

What makes you think the Canadians would go along with that idea?