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Wall Street: $474 Million, Detroit: 0
Submitted by Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
The more time passes, the more skeletons emerge from the closet. So what’s the punishment for an industry that has literally destroyed countless communities across the American landscape? Trillions in taxpayer bailouts and even more control over our government. They say “it would’ve been much worse without the bailouts.” Tell that to Detroit. From Bloomberg:
The only winners in the financial crisis that brought Detroit to the brink of state takeover are Wall Street bankers who reaped more than $474 million from a city too poor to keep street lights working.
The city started borrowing to plug budget holes in 2005 under former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who was convicted this week on corruption charges. That year, it issued $1.4 billion in securities to fund pension payments. Last year, it added $129.5 million in debt, 9.3 percent of its general-fund budget, in part to repay loans taken to service other bonds.
“We have no lights, no buses, poor streets and now we’re paying millions of dollars a year on our debt,” said David Sole, a retired municipal worker and advocate for Moratorium Now Coalition, a Detroit group that fights foreclosures and evictions. “The banks said they need to be paid first. But there is no money.”
The debt sales cost Detroit $474 million, including underwriting expenses, bond-insurance premiums and fees for wrong-way bets on swaps, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That almost equals the city’s 2013 budget for police and fire protection.
Municipal borrowers from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have paid billions to banks to end interest-rate swaps that didn’t protect them.
As banks were collecting fees from bonds, some targeted city homeowners with subprime loans that led to foreclosures, depressing real-estate values and tax revenue, Sole said.
Last year, Detroit’s water and sewer utility borrowed to pay more than $300 million to unwind swaps.
The only thing that has recovered is Wall Street’s parasitic business model. They will never stop until they destroy the entire country.
Full article here.
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Is anyone here sleeping tonight?
Girl claims "I'm too tired tonight." So uh, I'll be up.
Isn't Detroit the set for "The Walking Dead"?
Nope - too depressed.
I hear Detroit real estate is booming and there is a thriving startup scene.
I wonder what it feels like to live in a country which will die of financial cancer over the coming years.
About 2 years ago I wrote on ZH that business suits will one day be looked upon no better than a Nazi uniform, and that neck ties - after being used for hanging - will be put to good use staking up Tomato bushes.
Let's see if I'm right.
Wall St did the same thing to philly...............
http://www.citypaper.net/blogs/nakedcity/How-Wall-Street-took-331-millio...
philly has a way of shooting themselves in their damn dirty democrat feet.....any city that allows folks to pay themselves a half a million dollars to retire for one day deserves what they get
and with almost zero public outcry.....
the entire state is fucked due to this same kinda crap statewide
houses in the poconos can be had for just about twice the cost of the yearly property tax+association fees
right behind detroit, and it was once a vacation mecca, and now its a mountain ghetto
Philthadelphia
Damn right you are.
Faggots in pinstripes will join the rank of the Dodo.
Wach money try and "hide" among the decent, like rats in a chicken coup.
"There's never been a better time to buy a house," is what they say in Detroit on the radio. Just pull the boards off the window and stomp out the rats and you'll have a perfect "Fixer-Upper."
+1 for humour
"thriving startup scene" = the six blocks around the casinos...
What!? Only 429 million dollars? That seems like spare change to Wall Street.
I guess the only people left making any money are in the sex and drug trade, and we all know where those profits go, right CIA?
Pulitzer Prize Reporter Golfs The Streets Of Detroit
If it is between Wall Street and union municipal slugs, I'll take The Street.
Fun Deeetroit. And a hundreds other Dem/union/welfare plantation urban zones.
All these dumps sold mamma down river years ago. Wall Street is just killing off the dead, pulling a trigger on Old Trigger that can't get around anymore.
Empires, cities commit suicide. Wall Street is just trying to stuff the skank sour corpse in a body bag and recover the financed grill and Medicaid titanium hip implants.
"Sold down the river"
The problem is debt. At first the debt allowed huge expansion... until the day it was clear to even the mathematically impaired and parasitically greedy that all debt cannot be repaid. There can be redistribution, but ultimately there must be failure and a re-set.
We all know where debt comes from.
LOL +1
No, I'm waiting on my bank to open.
Sincerely,
Cyprian
After you bulldoze your way into your bank, do you want to head over to the Audi graveyard? I'll pay for gas.
Nice linking of multiple articles. Well done.
Those in Cyprus need to head to Brussels to serve some justice!
I'll be sleeping peacefully tonight. After the events in 08 I took everything out of the system knowing full well this is where we were headed. I only keep enough in the system to pay the bills, everything else, that isn't at the bottom of a lake, I can get my hands on in a moments notice.
What's your address?
1600 Pennsylvania ave..... Better be careful though I sleep with an AR by the bed stand an a 9 mil under my pillow. My wife sleeps with a Remington 870 on her side of the bed.
Your wife is a Wookie?
smart. all those who accepted the fact that the hofjuden run fractional reserve central banking is a 2000 year old money changer scam of theft, usury and enslavement by debt took their money out of the fraudulent banking system and invested in other kinds of money, tangible money.
That's my situation too, except I've slipped a little. I've let an extra 10k accumulate. Now I'll be up all night until the bank opens ...
Might as well nod off then, it's going to be a while.
Sleep? The best show in town is watching these debt-rat-politicians destroy the things they profess to cherish.
it's not night everywhere ,i got 12hrs to go before sleep .. lots o' charts to watch :-))
Out of Ambien - no.
I live near Detroit and I'll tell you, it's pretty terrible. The roads are literally coming undone. Inner city residents are fleeing en masse much to the chagrin of the suburbs. I was involved in an inner city gardening project and the only people who showed up were white people from the suburbs. Anyone who gets mad at that statement, fuck off, come here and live. I don't want to hear it.
"Detrois" as we call it is a war zone. I was in South America last year and I tell you, some of the parts of Lima, Peru, are indistinguishable from "Detrois" save a few faces.
Currently making plans to get away and I can't wait. Hopefully it works out.
Without doubt I would prefer living in Lima.
I feel I should say there were some very beautiful parts of Lima(ish) that I would have been comfortable staying.
My only question: Who has the best Mountain Biking, and rafting? Peru, Chile, or Argentina.
Where would I find it easiest to traverse among the countries?
I had the unfortunate experience of going to the Detroit area for business in 2007. I'm a huge baseball fan and always wanted to see Tigers Stadium so I ventured downtown. I've never seen such depression and ruin. The paint was peeling off of the stadium; there were boarded up skyscrapers downtown. People think I'm exaggerating when I tell them.
I am from Detroit originally, and in fact was just back there last month, and there are NO WORDS that can describe the depth of the destruction, ruin, decay, and general physical and spiritual rot that that city has seen in the last 50 years. It is simply beyond explanation or exaggeration. Only by seeing it with one's own eyes can one even begin to appreciate it ---- but without knowing just what a prosperous and vibrant economic and industrial powerhouse it was for many years, less than one lifetime ago, one can only superficially appreciate the magnitude of the ruin of Detroit, even by seeing it in its decadence today.
Your plane was diverted, you were in Manhattan the whole time!
I went to Detroit on a freebie trip a few short years ago that an acquaintance couldn't use (who am I to decline an excuse to skip working and fly in a fully stocked bar Learjet) to see the Tigers & Yankees face off in the playoffs (I cheered for the Tigers only because I hate nearly everything about New York) & Comerica Park (I think that's the name of it) is fairly new and actually one of the nicest major league stadiums that I've been to (and I've been to quite a few).
There's also a new, very modern football stadium immediately adjacent to the baseball stadium where the hapless Lions play, but I didn't see the inside (obviously).
As to the rest of the city, I didn't see much of it since I was only there for a night and 1/2 a day, and there are so few even decent hotels in the actual city I ended up staying in one by the airport, but from what I did see, the downtown area is WAY smaller than what I had anticipated, being MAYBE 1/10th as large as Chicago and MAYBE 1/4 the size of Toronto in terms of actual proper skycrapers or pedestrians, and I did notice several extremely large industrial type buildings of WWII (maybe even WWI) age that literally looked like they had been carpet bombed while driving along I-75 and I-94 on my way to the airport.
I'm not sure if the former criminal mayor had yet been indicted or convicted of 2,085 counts of federal crimes as of that time, yet.
Meet The Man Who Lives In Detroit's Abandoned Packard Auto Plan
Thirty years from now, akak will instead write:
I am from America originally, and in fact was just back there last month, and there are NO WORDS that can describe the depth of the destruction, ruin, decay, and general physical and spiritual rot that that country has seen in the last 50 years. It is simply beyond explanation or exaggeration. Only by seeing it with one's own eyes can one even begin to appreciate it ---- but without knowing just what a prosperous and vibrant economic and industrial powerhouse it was for many years, less than one lifetime ago, one can only superficially appreciate the magnitude of the ruin of America, even by seeing it in its decadence today.
I can explain how and why Detroit is a goin in the shitter. That's easy.
The elephant in the room does not like to be talked about.
Oh there are words;
"Record bonuses" fits like a glove in skank bank, NYC.
might as well get some zzz's - the PPT is on the case, will have us back to -10.0 by the open, and then you can still BTFD...
I sleep very soundly every night. My metal is underwater, my scuba gear is ready and my soul is at peace.
Yeah but they say Wall Street leads by about 9 months so by Christmas time Detroit should be a vibrant beautiful city again, right?
It's larger than Wall Street-Financial-Banking Parasite Complex vs Detroit; it's Wall Street-Financial-Banking Parasite Complex -vs- the United States.
And it's a hell of a lot larger parasitic drain than a half a billion dollars.
The Wall Street-Financial-Banking Parasite Complex has a parastic IV and is suckling on trillions upon trillions of what Chuck Schumer gibly refers to as "flyover country's" money.
FRNs: The Crack of Currency
you have to differentiate the "citizens of the US" instead of the "govt of the US"
Especially true now that the U.S. form of government is explicitly and irrefutably "of, by and for private banking interests..."
The drums are beating louder and faster... Can you hear them?
So without government money New York (a one industry town) is Detroit?
Here's an idea for Detroit/Jefferson Co./ILL/CA/USA:
Don't spent more than you make and you don't need a bank!
Want a new landfill? Save for 4-5 years and buy it.
Want Pensions? Pay as you go.
Want a new firehouse? Save for a few years and build it.
The added bonus in this leadership style is that when you've spent 4-5 years planning a firehouse,
you'll be very focused and buttoned-up when you DO build it!
Liberal socialists run all of the worst-run big cities in America.
Here's an idea for Detroit/Jefferson Co./ILL/CA/USA:
Don't spent more than you make and you don't need a bank!
Want a new landfill? Save for 4-5 years and buy it.
Funny I just posted about Jefferson the other day as a counterpoint in an argument about people demanding too many services and not being willing to pay for them.
There's the general media presentation (read: bullshit) of what happened and then there's the actual crime infested / JPM corrupted (multiple people went to jail and JPM paid almost $1B settlement) version of what happened.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-16/jefferson-county-alabama-s-path...
Also worth noting that the former mayor of Detriot in this case is on his way to jail & banks have their grimy hands all over this mess (as usual).
I live in a small Il suburb of Chicago that has 2 shiny new firehouses staffed by full time firefighters-this in a town that until a few years ago had a volunteer force.
that's the core problem everywhere...people pledged their future income for purchases in the present that they now can't afford...and in reality never could, especially at inflated prices.
no one wants to defer anything until they have all the money they need to own it.
just think how worthless all these overpriced automobiles would be if there were no credit. it used to be that if you drove a nice car it meant you had something saved, now a nice car means nothing because any schmoe can (and does) borrow to drive it in the here and now.
people who don't use credit think a lot harder before forking over cash for something...because they see the loss of cash as significant. money savings takes on a whole different meaning when you aren't swiping a card through a machine.
there the devil of fiat inflation, the saver doing
price discovery with the dreams of speculating/
dreaming hammers in the hands of young children, wide
eyed and drunk on the opiate moar. the units, slave passes
, another fools debt, some other asses notes.
"...that's the core problem everywhere...people pledged their future income for purchases in the present that they now can't afford..."
"...there the devil of fiat inflation, the saver doing
price discovery with the dreams of speculating..."
Confidence Fairy Soweth & Reapeth
or you could be a lib-tard Californian legislature... enact new taxes in 2013 (not to mention the federal government etc). so everyone pulls their taxes forward towards the end of 2012. (actually taxes were retroactive to beginning of 2012 for california... but the point remains).
BAM..Jan 2013 has what seems to be, a massive 'surplus' ($6bn they said!).
Now they realise...oops, you can't trend that out, its the golden goose's last egg.
But during Jan/Feb they were discussing how they should 'spend' this '$6bn' extra (please note, no mention was made of paying down the debt... just how to spend this $6bn 'surplus').
It's fkn crickets here now.
If you build it they will come
Wall St, Fed, ECB and banksters...10,000,000,000. Cyprus 0
You're missing three zeroes.
At some point in time people are going to say enough ..... and no amount of circuses will stop the bloodshed.
alot of people are on the same page-alot of them are lingering around walmart's empty ammo cases with a glazed look in their eyes
I see it all the time. The gun department will be full of people but there is nothing to buy.
happened to be in there today and got a little stocked-was soon gone even w/ 3 box per customer limit-plus it was all ukranian made stuff.
This is what happens when leaders provide for the citizens, rather than encourage them to provide for themselves. The able will leave and the unable will stay and their ability to provide for themselves will atrophy to the point that they can no longer sustain themselves without help.
This is what has happened to Detroit over the past few decades.
Now, with every stat on nationwide government support on the rise (food stamps, welfare, disability, etc.), it’s not hard to use history as a guide to see where the nation is headed.
Leaders providing for the citizens? I think you mean leaders stealing everything for themselves and throwing the citizenry bones to keep them placated.
Foraging is not a successful economic strategy.
I feel optimistic right now even though everything seems to be falling apart. Something about being the darkest before the dawn, I feel a new global renaissance is about to take place.
Hear you, but still too early. Wait two years or so.
Won't happen. War will come before it gets that far. And this war will be the one that Einstein talked about.
it is the proper funk tioning of the funky
system, we have exposed and disgusted it repeatedly.
no one heard it the first second or third time.
we will pay and pay till the the end?
the end
This is the end...no safety or surprise; the end.
The sooner the parasites start eating each other rather than their host the better!
did this governor take over detroit to make sure that the debt is made whole? also-I saw a pole that Detroit would reelect Kwame if the election were held today-that says it all.
Burn all banks in Detroit to the ground, that'll send them a message.
The guillotines are on order. hujel
Start watching for old ladies knitting
Must-read on DE-troit:
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/03/15/detroit-dems-enric...
What I keep saying: these so-called "progressives" ARE the party of plutocracy. It's Clinton's fault; Obama just resurrected it and went further.
Weimar's a comin'...hyperinflation at a store near you!
Wall Street + car business = national suicide.
Of course, one needs the other desperately. No loans = no car sales as today's car is priced well out of the cash- reach of 95% of American workers.
Driving the car does not produce value for the car buyer, it is simply a toy. The car business itself never did much for the home city, only sucked the life out of it.
Wall Street holds Detroit hostage, what is there to do about it?
Nothing, the citizens are powerless, they have no real say in what is done to them ... what has been done to them.
Then why are they still buying cars? Because they add no value? Driving to one's place of work so one can do one's job is not value-additive for the worker? No one commutes to work? We're all just out joyriding with gas at $4? You're the one who said "American workers". Who are your arguments designed to fool? Toddlers?
So... what percentage of american families has less than 2 cars? How much of these sales by GM are made to these people and how much to those that switch thier previous cars for newer model, or buy 3rd or 4th?
First car - OK there will be very productive uses for it. Especially in a country that built everything for cars, has extremely sprawled cities with poor public communication (especially medium cities, or outskirts where metro doesn't reach).
Second car - well it's likely both adults work in different places, much easier to lend it to kids, still some benefit that is not just additional comfort.
Ofcourse, both of these cars are relatively small and efficient, or old and were really cheap to buy. This is pretty much where "productive value" ends, anything over is additional comfort, prestige etc. Nothing wrong in that, though I don't really see the virtue in enabling more comfortable or prestigious cars to people that can't even pay for them fully from their own money.
You have the power Dorothy, it is in you, just open your mind and let the truth flo to it.
look around any city in USA and see getto negroids in brand new GM cars talking on obuma free phones, no money down, 10 yr pay offs, keepen peace in the hood.
George Harrison & Bob Dylan - A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall - Concert for Bangl
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffv2wdm2rjg
The banksters want their money tell them to come to the middle of the wasteland at midnight to pick it up.
Who is the bigger crook, the bankster that takes advantage of the idiot liberal, or the idiot liberal that runs his city/state/country into the ground because they really dont have a F!@#in clue what the F!@# they are doing?
A: one is a crook, the other a fool/tool.
Where have you been, my darling young one ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=-ZsweuaqAf8&feature=endscreen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAgetld_50o&NR=1&feature=endscreen
Drove around Detroit with two finance types last week.
Says one: This place looks promising with the rebuilding of former glory after a war. It needs people with vision, common purpose and a work ethic.
Says the other one: Yeah, this place needs a hundred thousand Israeli settlers.
Said I (jokingly): But not too close to Dearborn, or all hell will break loose.
>> hundred thousand Israeli settlers??<<
Are you mad? What Israeli will come without billions of dollars in support from Washington? Better get AIPAC on that one.
War?
I look forward to OWS members and Tea Party patriots taking turns kicking the chairs out from underneath the swinging bankers.
Detroit is what happens when you have white flight.
It's more like the cargo cult. They wore suits and attended meetings without realizing that it takes more than that.
rivoniaboy:
" Detroit is what happens when you have white flight. "
After the '67 riots it has been all downhill:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Detroit_riot
"Motor City Burning - Part One"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WybEb13jysk
This video is part one of a sixteen part documentary I produced to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Detroit riot. The documentary aired on WILS AM 1320 in Lansing, Michigan (USA) on July 24 and 25, 2007.
Detroit was the center of the universe when I grew up there in the 60s.
Then the center shifted to Seattle / Silicon Valley.
Now it shifted again to anyplace my two children are.
Documentary/Detroit promo (NOT pron) film:
DETROIT: City on the Move (Part 1) (1965)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUbsw28PCpA
It once held such promise ...
Private Frazer: "We're doomed Captain Mainwaring"
...and further to my Dad's Army reference (albeit in absolutely non-sequitur fashion...or maybe not), if an election were held tomorrow in USSA, the Kenyan would STILL win> Truly, we are doomed.
America's gone terminal. The Jew bankers keep lending money to the blacks and the blacks never pay it back, so they lend more money to them.
Pay up, whitey.
Detroit deStroit.
Detroit will be the first American city to be burned to the ground with rioting and looting.
That already happened.
Fear not. It is all part of the evolutionary plan. We will likely soon be extinct as we obviously are bent on suicide.
Oh, we're sorry, we thought you understood, it was our risk you were managing, not yours.
Your friendly TBTF Banksters
Throwing the baby out with the bath water.
move toWashington, DC. 2% unemployment, money printing press
Detroit is just ruin concentrated. If you drive through most rural areas you see the same thing. Empty businesses and homes for miles on end. The corporate farming model did for rural America what the socialists did for the cities.
Really? We're blaming Wall Street for the terrible decisions of local, state and national governments now?
Sorry, but they were suckers playing with other peoples' money and they got duped. That's what happens to suckers: it's just a shame it was our money and not theirs that Wall Street raked in. I'll start feeling sorry for politicians when bankers turn honest.
There is only one state that is not under the thumb of Wall Street, and that is North Dakota. It's been that way since 1919, when North Dakota told Wall Street where to stick it. Now, it's too late for any state, or local government, to pull out of any entanglement with Wall Street. Wall Street owns America.
InjuredThales:
" Really? We're blaming Wall Street for the terrible decisions of local, state and national governments now? "
Yup.
That would be some of the lesser knowledgable participants here on ZH ...A couple of ideas for Detroit given its present situation:
Individual or collective homesteading - Detroit has no cash to pay for its pension debts. Detroit, however, owns a lot of real estate. Why not offer the unions or union members parcels or huge tracts of land in lieu of the cash that it doesn't have? Think of this as homesteading. Imagine an area where retired police and firemen were given free homesteading lots for themselves and to market. The Romans invited the Croats to come and settle in the Balkans. They were a warlike tribe.They were given the land because the Romans knew they would defend the edge of the Empire to defend their own land. A retired police neighborhood in Detroit would similarly discourage breakins and muggings in such an area.
Alternatively, the unions, whose members would take a pension cut in bankruptcy, could be given a few hundred acres here and there to develop large 5,000 - 50,000 member self sufficient resident gated communities with groceries, Targets, private municipal services, doctors offices and other municipal services. Since every apartment building is a gated community, this is not a wild idea. Such gated communities would also pay some taxes to the City of Detroit so it would be a win-win situation for both the City and the unions.
If the idea of giving away hundreds of acres seems far fetched, go to Google maps and drag the little yellow man into different areas of Detroit for a "street view". Detroit is presently almost giving away land for tree farming to big monied interests. It might as well, instead, pay down its obligations with the same land. When there is nothing left of Detroit to destroy, the rats will move on to the suburbs and the monied interests will be able to redevelop Detroit for fleeing suburbanites. Its like the village exterminator letting loose what he catches in his mome village to insure a future profit stream.
Great idea! But, the bankers will never allow it. Detroit is destined to be one, gigantic FEMA camp.
Beautiful Mount Airy Lodge all you have to bring, is your love of everything!
The appearance of the law must be upheld, Especially when it's being broken