The Bankruptcy of Detroit and the Division of America

[Crewleader]

by Robert Reich

September 5, 2014

Detroit is the largest city ever to seek bankruptcy protection, so its bankruptcy is seen as a potential model for other American cities now teetering on the edge.

But Detroit is really a model for how wealthier and whiter Americans escape the costs of public goods they’d otherwise share with poorer and darker Americans.

Judge Steven W. Rhodes of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan is now weighing Detroit’s plan to shed $7 billion of its debts and restore some $1.5 billion of city services by requiring various groups of creditors to make sacrifices.

Among those being asked to sacrifice are Detroit’s former city employees, now dependent on pensions and healthcare benefits the city years before agreed to pay. Also investors who bought $1.4 billion worth of bonds the city issued in 2005.

http://robertreich.org/post/96715972175

[Art_from_Ark]

1. In 1975, New York City filed a bankruptcy petition

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/05/nyregion/recalling-new-york-at-the-brink-of-bankruptcy.html

[Demeter]

2. And Gerald Ford, with an eye to the integrity and honor of the nation, Bailed it out.

Too bad we don't have a President like that anymore...he was from Michigan, mind you. He wouldn't put up with this.

What can you expect out of Chicago, anyway? Besides Milton Friedman and the Chicago school of economics?

[Art_from_Ark]

3. At first, Ford had balked at the idea of bailing out New York City

But he changed his mind sometime after the New York Daily News responded with its famous headline: "Ford to City: Drop Dead".

[Demeter]

4. Yeah, that was when we used to have a FREE (as in, unchained) PRESS