Michigan's governor declares Detroit in state of financial emergency

[FarCenter]

Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan on Friday declared a fiscal state of emergency in Detroit in a move that could lead to the appointment of a financial manager who could file for the largest municipal bankruptcy ever.

Snyder's decision allows the city a 10-day grace period to formulate a plan to fix its finances before the governor reconsiders appointing an emergency manager who would likely drastically reduce services.

...

Detroit has faced the steepest population decline of any American city in recent decades. Once the fifth largest U.S. city that shone as the birthplace of the U.S. automotive industry and Motown music, it now ranks 18th with about 700,000 people - after suffering a 25 percent decline in population between 2000 and 2010.

With the exodus of residents and jobs as the auto industry contracted, the city has suffered from declining tax revenue and rising crime while saddled with the infrastructure and labor costs of a bygone era.

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/economywatch/michigans-governor-declares-detroit-state-financial-emergency-1C8638601#/business/economywatch/michigans-governor-declares-detroit-state-financial-emergency-1C8638601

[Union Scribe]

1. Snyder and his Koch puppetmasters are literally threats to democracy.

Fuck him, the people who voted for him, and the Detroit newspapers that endorsed him.

[haele]

2. All the better to sell Belle Isle cheaply to Snyder's rich buddies for their Randriod Utopia.

It's been reported that there's a billionaire or two wanting to buy it to create their own "Country" where they can live out the Galt's Gulch fantasy on what used to be a fairly well-maintained public park. Michigan's "Emergency Manager" law encourages selling off public goods for pennies to outside interests, so I'm thinking that's now pretty much a done deal.

Of course, these brave, wealthy "captains of industry" are going to try and guarantee "success" they can point to by doing going Galt close enough to a real-world infrastructure where they can save some serious costs because not only can they bargain with both US and Canadian suppliers of goods and keep their investments protected by those countries, it's an area that is so desperately poor that they can get all the little moochers to come in to work their asses off for less than minimum wage and no legal redress under the table and leave before they get to be a bother. Maybe they can even get almost free work from prisoners in the municipal jail - especially if chronic indebtedness can become a jail-able offense.
Probably can even make a deal with Detroit's "Emergency Manager" to subsidize on-call access to police, fire, and hospital services for a pittance of what they would have paid taxes for if they lived just outside the city.

It's now their own private paradise, beotches! All the bennies of being in the US with none of the legal drawbacks.

Haele