Motown City Declares Bankruptcy

Detroit has become the largest city in the United States to declare bankruptcy. This happened two days ago - I think the same day the Royal baby was born :-). You might be asking why am I so interested in a non-rock-n-roll story. Well, fact of the matter is, you could argue that Detroit is rock n' roll in someway. It was the home of Motown that produced legends like Micheal Jackson, Lionel Richie and Steve Wonder. Most recently Metallica held their annual Orion Musical + More festival, and the band was hoping the city would become a permanent place to host it annually. Well, looks like that's just not going to be the case.

Nevertheless, the city had to go down this path because it reportedly owe $18 billion dollars to bankers, retirees, pensioners and city workers like policemen, firefighters and even school teachers. To put their dire scenario in perspective, in June of this year, only forty percent of street lights were working and 1/3 of the ambulances were in service. I assume the hospitals were also seriously downsized. Also, close to 200 schools were shut down since 2011.

Detroit is/was known as the Motor City. It's the home to so-called big three auto manufactures: Chrysler, Ford and GM. Recently, though, there was mini-auto boom with President Obama's "auto bailout," but it wasn't enough to save the sleeping city.

Next question is who's to blame. Apparently the person who was appointed to "save" the city from this predicament is Kevin Orr - city's emergency manager, who's a bankruptcy lawyer. I wonder if it's a good idea to put a person who's good at handling bankrupted stuff, but not necessary good at prevent it in the first place. There's obviously a plenty of blame to go around, but things will never be the same in Detroit.

So what's next for Detroit? I don't know but it's hard to imagine anything good coming out that place; no more rock n' roll and no more fast cars. If you are living in Detroit, for the love of God, please the hell out of there!