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Detroit Tries to Avoid Bankruptcy


Parsad

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I don't see how there is a ghost of chance that Detroit avoids bankruptcy.

 

If you read the special auditor's report, you will see how bad things are.

 

If it were not for the casinos, Detroit would have been done a long, long, long time ago.

 

If you are trying to collect property taxes, flip a coin.  Half the property owners don't pay it!

 

40% of the streetlamps don't work.  There are tens of thousands of abandoned buildings, something like 40 square miles of vacant land.

 

This is a sad portent.

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  • 1 month later...

And there goes Detroit. Maybe they can lower costs by outsourcing law enforcement to robots. With private partners, they can redevelop the 78,000 abandoned properties and re-brand with a catchy name like "Delta City".

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So in a little over a month they went from CCC to bankruptcy.

 

It seems to me that ratings agencies have even less credibility in the muni market than they do in corporate and sovereign markets.

 

AGO's Detroit exposure, page 37: http://assuredguaranty.com/uploads/PDFs/Equity_Presentation_1Q-13_v052313.pdf

 

MBI's Detroit exposure: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20130305006625/en/National-Public-Finance-Guarantee-Corporation-Comments-Exposure

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"Orr proposed that unsecured creditors with $11.5 billion in claims receive notes worth about $2 billion.

 

...

 

[Jonathon Carmel] cited the example of Assured, which he said faces a potential of $360 million of obligations for its $12 billion of claims-paying resources."

 

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-07-11/detroit-s-20-percent-offer-jeopardizes-insurers-recovery-muni-credit

 

MBI and AGO down slightly today.

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  • 4 months later...

I'm not sure if anyone here enjoys photography, but some French artists have put together an amazing gallery called 'The Ruins Of Detroit'.

 

They've gone around the city and taken pictures of various buildings and places where the former grandeur has started to become almost completely enveloped by substantial amounts of neglect and decay.

 

It's a beautiful project. Quite haunting, but then again it's also genuinely poignant and so many kinds of awesome.

 

http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit/index.html

 

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I'm not sure if anyone here enjoys photography, but some French artists have put together an amazing gallery called 'The Ruins Of Detroit'.

 

They've gone around the city and taken pictures of various buildings and places where the former grandeur has started to become almost completely enveloped by substantial amounts of neglect and decay.

 

It's a beautiful project. Quite haunting, but then again it's also genuinely poignant and so many kinds of awesome.

 

http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit/index.html

 

Thanks for posting.  Very haunting.  Very sad in many ways how a once great city like that has disintegrated.  If they want to raise some money they should start marketing themselves to Hollywood.  It could provide the set for post-apocalyptic movies.  The producers wouldn't have to change a thing.

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I went through some of my old neighborhoods on the East side of Detroit the other day...

 

Now I understand why my Grandparents and Mother would get so agitated when they visited Detroit...

 

The house I lived in high school is boarded up...about 10%-15% of the housing stock in the immediate area is burned/boarded up.  There are large apartment buildings that are burned up and abandoned.  Some areas look like there has been street to street fighting.  Ruined buildings, burned out hulks of vehicles...ruined people wandering around.

 

The high school I went to is no longer...all of the high schools my friends went to are also defunct (Bishop Gallagher, Regina, Lutheran East).  It appears that some type of "magnet" schools are trying to make a go of it.  Good luck, I doubt it will work.

 

Progressing onto Harper...The building that had my Father's law office is vacant.  Not burned or boarded up, but it is vacant.  I would estimate that close to 50% of the businesses on this street are closed.  It is so bad even a lot of the liquor/party stores are shut down! 

 

The new growth industry appears to be wig shops for some reason.  Who needs all these wigs?  Alas, even the wig shops are having a difficult time of it, as it appears that 3/4 of them are not open at 1 in the afternoon...

 

I have a package to mail and go into the post office on Harper.  The lobby is set up as some type of maximum security prison.  You interact with the clerks through bullet proof glass.  Got a package?  Put it in a revolving air lock chamber.  The clerk then rotates it and has access to it.  The place is pretty well armored against bullets...but what about poison gas?  I've never seen anything like this... 

 

I feel like I've slipped into some type of alternate reality...a bizarre dystopian future.

 

Detroit is a very odd place!

 

 

 

 

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I went through some of my old neighborhoods on the East side of Detroit the other day...

 

Now I understand why my Grandparents and Mother would get so agitated when they visited Detroit...

 

The house I lived in high school is boarded up...about 10%-15% of the housing stock in the immediate area is burned/boarded up.  There are large apartment buildings that are burned up and abandoned.  Some areas look like there has been street to street fighting.  Ruined buildings, burned out hulks of vehicles...ruined people wandering around.

 

The high school I went to is no longer...all of the high schools my friends went to are also defunct (Bishop Gallagher, Regina, Lutheran East).  It appears that some type of "magnet" schools are trying to make a go of it.  Good luck, I doubt it will work.

 

Progressing onto Harper...The building that had my Father's law office is vacant.  Not burned or boarded up, but it is vacant.  I would estimate that close to 50% of the businesses on this street are closed.  It is so bad even a lot of the liquor/party stores are shut down! 

 

The new growth industry appears to be wig shops for some reason.  Who needs all these wigs?  Alas, even the wig shops are having a difficult time of it, as it appears that 3/4 of them are not open at 1 in the afternoon...

 

I have a package to mail and go into the post office on Harper.  The lobby is set up as some type of maximum security prison.  You interact with the clerks through bullet proof glass.  Got a package?  Put it in a revolving air lock chamber.  The clerk then rotates it and has access to it.  The place is pretty well armored against bullets...but what about poison gas?  I've never seen anything like this... 

 

I feel like I've slipped into some type of alternate reality...a bizarre dystopian future.

 

Detroit is a very odd place!

those guys from the wire should make a show out of it. Or maybe that would be too depressing.

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