Bankrupt - How Cronyism and Corruption Brought Down Detroit

troit unemployment rate 12.7% that compares with the national rate of 8.9 only half of michigan counties had increases in population the rest had declines there's new census data that finds the number of people living in the motor city has plunged to a level not seen in more than a century this may be new to their neighborhood but it's a problem that's been going on in Detroit for years abandoned burned-out houses vacant factories and overgrown parking needle after needle left behind by people they say who come to Detroit to buy their drugs park here and leave the dangerous and dirty remnants behind linking it with the tragedy of Detroit tragedy that was decades in the making can tell us about America the city of Detroit has lost nearly 2/3 of its population since its post-war peak back in 1950 nearly two million people called the Motor City home say that number is barely above 700,000 tax base in Detroit has utterly evaporated and now it has become the largest US city in history ever to file for bankruptcy over a million people have left the Motor City the cars various industries and some of the most sold thumping music of our time tonight Detroit is a statistic this was inevitable Detroit is struggling with an estimated 18 billion dollars of debt and other liabilities people fleeing out of Detroit in every direction all that red is people leaving well Detroit is a spectacular failure the fourth largest city in the US filed for bankruptcy Thursday afternoon they went to other places hoping to save themselves from the catastrophe of that city after struggling with an 18 billion dollar debt you know millions of people's lives destroyed its finances ravaged and its neighborhoods hollowed out by a long slow decline in population and auto manufacturing think about how far we've come together refused to throw in the towel and do nothing we refuse to let his troika maker do I love you Troy oh yes I love Detroit for the sports Pro Lions the Red Wings well Detroit means to me Detroit is home I Detroit's a special place I love Detroit I love Detroit I love it I mean I love it see my sweatshirt I am Detroit Lions head on so yeah I'm a big Detroit fan you could say that besides a blue-collar aspect and hardworking people there's a there's a creative buzz around Detroit and our past our past reflects on our future we have we have high standards to hold up to what really built the city of Detroit were the things that are the substance of a market system entrepreneurship and incentive if you read the annals of Detroit especially in the early 20th century you can tell the Henry Ford's and and the suppliers what came to be the suppliers durán the message was out to all sort of places in the u.s. upstate New York come to Detroit that's where you can make your your living your fortune we're getting together essentially what we call today a critical mass of entrepreneurship invention and Edison was part of that and you had so many that tied in to give Detroit its economic preeminence in the 20th century that the auto industry did just feel it it built Detroit the companies were so successful and the demand for cars went up after Henry Ford created the five dollar day and and cars became affordable to the masses production increased and with the increase in production met jobs so you had people moving from all over the country to Detroit for the auto jobs because they it was much better for them to be in a city and to get a job which paid a steady wage than to be working in the field which may or may not yield a good harvest some year so people flocked to the city and it became one of the biggest most metropolitan communities in the United States all because the auto industry and then so when we talk about the music industry the same thing you know we're the birthplace of Motown and it played a huge role in the fabric of this country we're still the place that you know created a soundtrack for the nation in the world if there ever were a we can do the patriotism in both world wars World War one a big supplier to the war after World War two the arsenal of democracy because I was brought up and reading in the schools and everything and such about how Detroit stopped everything it was doing during World War two and produced enough material to give to the the Allies and basically crush fascism and that's something that we were always always proud of here Detroit had a worldwide reputation well-deserved patriotism to go with it labor force to go with it one that knew what it was doing within 40 miles of downtown Detroit you could find any type of engineer that existed on the face of the earth now you tell me that isn't the raw ingredients for productivity and capital investment that's what it was all about that's what Detroit would have to restore in order to achieve re regrowth rebirth Renaissance you are about to witness the very exciting story of a city and its people it will be an adventure that will open new sights in familiar surroundings it is a story of a city seeking new horizons and a resolute Kahn test with great challenges that city is Detroit home of nearly two million people yes Detroit is enjoying its finest hour there is a Renaissance a rebirth in the city I have a love-hate relationship with Detroit I've disappointed I think the city could have been ran a little bit better there's not a lot about Detroit lately that I love jealous of like the Chicago our sister city as the first date comes to mind when I think of Detroit but this is like they're doing it why can't we you know what I'm saying and I feel like we have more to offer so why are we struggling and they really have to put them down like why are they thriving and we're not we should be strong I can under I guess we're like everyone else we're not sure exactly how long the tribe will be here you know me you know ten years just language and they really forgot about this [ __ ] this said yeah yeah absolutely it's sickening what has happened and listening to my grandmother and my dad talk about growing up and what a safe city it was and just what it's become and I'm not going to I'm not afraid to go to Detroit I know where I'm supposed to be I've got my head on my shoulders at all times but that a city that has such a storied history and participated in actually doing something in one of the great world events that now in areas looks like a third world city it makes you both sick and makes you want to punch something the big three had 70 percent of the market 80% of the market through the 70s into the 80s and it started to decline when competition boosted it's on its way down as of volute I'll say mid to late 70s you had a lot of things out of Detroit's control but a lot of things in Detroit's control but I'd say the the greatest problem the offset to the entrepreneurship that prevailed in the earlier part of the century is the Detroit got hit with complaisance in the post-world War two ERA there really wasn't any competitor worldwide up until of 1970 that was serious threat to Detroit and when it began to appear mostly from Japan Detroit wasn't responding in any way shape or form effectively to these threats they were building cars that weren't what the consumers wanted the quality wasn't as good I personally had a couple of bad experiences with Americ cars my first car in high school was a Dodge Neon a lot of problems with it a lot of problems with it and so that's when the decline started and they didn't recognize that I mean they were making money they were fat and happy both the workers and management and they didn't realize that they needed to adjust before the fall GM I remember this very well because they had a three-year plan this is back in 1987 so that was to my mind the benchmark date 1987 when the automaker said you know we're not we're not getting our market share we continue to lose market share our profitability except for the exceptional yours it is not anywhere where it needs to be and so the money was coming in but the demands kept getting higher and higher and higher and nobody decided to adjust ahead of time the auto industry and its suppliers that the auto industry in total and the ancillary in the tertiary industries that support are supported by the auto sales they all sought refuge in other states and other out State Michigan areas legacy costs helped bankrupt GM and Chrysler Auto Workers were guaranteed pensions so now most people get 401ks you put you invest yourself into it the company sometimes matches it and the auto companies just absolutely stayed away from that so they were still letting people accrue pensions and you had more people accruing and and collecting on pensions that you had people working to pay off those pensions you know this is the birthplace of the UAW you know up in Flint where the sit-down strike happened in the 30s I believe so the union mentality even if you're not part of the Union is ingrained here unions played a role in in society in the 50s there were working conditions primarily the the workers wanted and demanded safer working conditions they wanted cleaner environments and they wanted healthier environments and that's why they came into play and they helped clean up some dangerous situations that were that were happening in auto plants all over the place over time the contract provisions have gotten so restrictive I mean they're jokes that they used to tell you know a light bulb will go out and you had to call the Union electrician to come change the light bulb even though it was your station you couldn't turn around and change the light bulb and so the provisions became so ridiculous that they've sort of they've sort of made themselves irrelevant the union model has been unsustainable they used to have some ridiculous provisions cut me one of them was the jobs bank where they paid laid-off workers to come to work and do nothing and there were workers who sat there for years and never worked on the auto floor again unfortunately the auto unions again used to a lot of agreements a lot of strikes when they didn't get their way we're just reactionary I have no other word to use but totally reactionary to progress the flexability job sharing and so forth this is my turf and nobody intervenes that if if we don't get our way in terms of the contract the wages the benefits you don't have a workforce and unfortunately that prevailed right up until 1998 so the second half especially the second half of the 20th century was impervious to the global necessities the rest of the world was restructuring faster and they were beginning to move to the south the right-to-work states where there's more flexibility you don't have to be a member of a union or pay union dues to be an auto worker and they train their own even when the auto industry the big three we're laying off workers because they were losing market share and capacity of the Honda's Toyota's this sons didn't want our our laid off auto workers because they were I remember this keenly in their estimation the Japanese spoiled they they weren't the workforce they'll start from scratch and make their own culture and that's what they did early on I think that the automakers sort of they dictated what happened they certainly got special privileges within communities they got special privileges for land when things started to go south for them they did look to the government once they started to have financial troubles there's a famous the issue that happened in Detroit that involved involved Poletown where they used eminent domain to take over a neighborhood so they could build a plant my dad had actually grown up in the area that they were knocking down and there was a huge fight a lot of families that had grown up in the area some of the families that he had grown up with were still in the area some of their kids had stayed and when the pol town plant was proposed a lot of people were upset in fighting that or mad about it because that was a vibrant neighborhood that a lot of people had fond memories of and a lot of families had roots too it was probably easier for GM to do much easier because they knew the people they knew the players Poletown represented both confiscation of property and I put that very bluntly and a disorientation of an entire population ethnic population in in Detroit for the benefit of promised jobs 1800 that mostly never materialized when GM wanted the land for Poletown they basically decided that they were going to get it one way or another and they had the government use eminent domain to get it for them so they burned a lot of bridges with people you now had a corporation coming in and taking over neighborhoods and that didn't sit well with people probably about six months before they actually started getting people out he took the whole family down showed us where he grew up brought his uh my grandmother his mom down and we took a tour of the place for half a day went to the restaurant that they used to go to first bar that he ever got a drink from and everything because it was a very very close tight-knit neighborhood and area they were upset and then the people who lived there I remember seeing stories you know reading about in the Detroit News of the Free Press these people that were just absolutely devastated that they'd lived there for 30 or 40 years and why were they being uprooted people understood the jobs and they understood the potential but people also understand their neighborhoods and they don't want somebody to come in and take their house away so that they can build an auto plant it's the apotheosis of government sort of you know they're not just getting involved in the economy they're literally confiscating property and giving it to politically favored groups for years America's automakers have faced serious challenges burdensome costs drinking share of the market and declining profits in recent months the global financial crisis has made these challenges even more severe now some US auto executives say that their companies are nearing collapse and that the only way they can buy time to restructure is with help from the federal government it's a difficult situation that involves fundamental questions about the proper role of government on the one hand government has a responsibility not to undermine the private enterprise system the other hand government has a responsibility to safeguard the broader health and stability of our economy addressing the challenges in the auto industry requires us to balance these two responsibilities if we were to allow the free market to take its course now it would almost certainly lead to disorderly bankruptcy and liquidation for the auto makers under ordinary economic circumstances I would say this is the price that failed companies must pay and I would not favour intervening to prevent the auto makers from going out of business but these are not ordinary circumstances I mean at some point you're going to need to slash benefits that are given to retirees or pensioners or whatever group it is so you know I think the lesson is that longer you put off that reckoning point the more damaging it's going to be to everyone involved on both sides of the equation and Detroit's a perfect example of that when auto sales anything that the automakers made when that volume of sales was exceeding for four or five years in a row 17 million units unprecedented where the automakers the big three should have been making profits hand over fist they couldn't even break even they were losing money at that point they realized the game was up they were working in an end game and they still were having labor disputes labor stoppages they couldn't stop the bleeding so they did go to the government you know hat in hand and said we need help and you need to bail us out certainly they were looking for a lifeline from DC and they got you know a little aid certain industries were favored but it just seemed to postpone the inevitable the initial bailout was you know there are lots of small businesses and hard times you know why do you why do you choose them when they were shrinking there were other you know manufacturers who were in this in the south that had good management management practices so why do you choose and you know the question is you know GM's coming people are saying GM coming back and success but I think if you give any business sixty five billion dollars and they could be selling ketchup popsicles and could make a comeback GM remember also had the options of getting smaller quickly much smaller much more quickly so III think the presence of intercession by a federal state other governments assistance simply delays and truncates the process of recovery in the entire auto industry and I think that's what's happened in housing that's what's happened in autos GM and Chrysler both got significant deals from the government to help them stay afloat I think in the end what we found was that some of the provisions that were up in the bankruptcy favored the unions more than they did some of the people who had invested in the company would GM have gone away had they entered a traditional bankruptcy no but creditors wouldn't have had their bondholders creditors would not have been for lack of a better word screwed the way they were under the government policy I think it was cronyism in that certain groups were favored the UAW and its management were favored over bondholders and long term creditors which included middle-class pension funds as far as the stakes of the company they got in the reorganization that really shattered bankruptcy precedent it was an abridgment of contract it also terrible incentive precedent for the future and I think will hurt Detroit because Detroit now facing the same sorts of of dichotomy and favoritism from political forces rather than a normal financial economic you can do that you can favor one group over another as a political matter but that's a short time horizon and the economics which we are especially keen on aren't encouraged by bad behavior and there are much more intangible costs to to deals like that you know the damage that's done to rule of law and and faith in the sanctity of contracts by simply voiding obligations owed to certain creditors I mean that that has damaged far beyond the actual financial damage that has done to those creditors the way in which those cases proceeded which is the fact that the UAW didn't take any haircuts it is good to be with some Auto Workers today all right everybody had a seat I get comfortable Steven Rattner for instance confessed after the fact everybody else was asked to take a haircut but not the UAW and when you recognize that one of the reasons they were in that soup was because of these gold-plated salary and pension plans they're paying the UAW workers whereas everybody else in the American economy is having to adjust to the realities of the modern American economy and the federal government was coming in and ballon these guys out I think that runs a lot of people the wrong way we saw the government choosing winners and losers and nowhere was this more evident than Delphi which was a GM supplier that had been in bankruptcy and in order to get GM out of bankruptcy sooner the government decided to help shore up Delphi as well what ended up happening was all of the non-union workers at Delphi had their pensions slashed by up to 70% whereas the union workers the people were great allies with this administration their pensions were made whole by GM so we saw the government organizing and the company picking winners and losers based on their political status so a lot of these retirees you know were they retired thinking that they had this money that was going to be there and the government stepped in and said no only the union workers will keep their money also cronyism - Fiat that we basically gave away you know an equality American auto company - to an Italian company that was already in trouble even before it if I acquired Chrysler and Fiat really paid it literally paid zero for for Chrysler and all it was contributing with sort of its some intellectual property rights the auto bailouts our exhibit will say one B of cronyism if we take the bank bailouts as Exhibit one a exhibit one B and the reason I say that is is while a case could be made for limited government intervention in that situation what actually happened in those cases was cronyism run amok Oh which is first it's very clear under the statute that tarp money which was designed for bank balance is not allowed to be used far out for car dealers the second thing we see is when you actually look at the numbers what you see is the entire loss to the American taxpayer came about as a result of preferential treatment given to the United Auto Workers in the in that case which is if they had been treated as similarly situated parties would be treated in other cases whether it's airline bankruptcies or other industries taxpayers would have been paid back in full and instead what we saw was the government intervening transferring money to a very politically powerful interest groups and running over the rights of other parties in order to enrich political supporters they've made it easier to sustain what had been bad behavior and we can see that you still have the same infrastructure you still have a lot of the same management and workers that contributed to the problem those companies were run into the ground by their management and you know they did the same thing at the banks but it was a lot longer and more obvious decline General Motors was hemorrhaging billions of dollars for years and just makin those same garbage cars I think is what people's perspective was and anybody on the street could see that those were terrible cars and that they're paying their managers too much and that they were paying the the UAW guys too much and retired too early and instead they're bringing it back on us to bail them out for their terrible cars so GM's you know GM's criticism was deserved it was the worst performing and worse managed you know if you're if you're providing like a short-term infusion of cash for whether it's a city or a company or an individual but you're not changing the structure of how how that entity brings in and then spends money you're not addressing the underlying problems you're really just sort of delaying the inevitable what you need to be doing is reducing that incentive to get involved in the political process and you do that by reducing the control that the government or that political actors have over the economy once you not only bail out an industry like Detroit but you make the argument that President Obama has is that it's a success you're suggesting it's a role model for the country you're suggesting that picking winners and losers is something the government can do and should do but one of the things we know going back to the very beginning of American history was the framers themselves were concerned about cronyism they were concerned about well-organized interest groups what they called factions commandeering the government in order to reach themselves they set up a constitutional structure that was designed to prevent that from happening I think what we've seen over the course of the 20th century and reaching a new level when it came to the financial crisis was an erosion of those constitutional constraints on the ability of the government to enrich special interest factions choose whatever word that you wanted to choose and the reason why they did that was to limit the politicians and to limit the special interest and so once you take those restraints off basically what I think we're unfortunately seeing is like the law of gravity early sort of seeing that way to the founders which is as soon as you give interest groups and politicians the opportunity to enter into these corrupt bargains they take them if they think that it's going to give them some sort of gain and I think unfortunately that's what we've been seeing is an erosion of the constitutional culture and in the wake of that an erosion of the political culture where this seems become more and more acceptable the market says I will reward those who do the right thing better faster cheaper more secure for consumers that's their job and if you put barriers to their doing that job they're going to be weaker and susceptible to failure if they fail and you bail them out at others expense then the proper that moral thing to do is say to the people who from whom you've taken money have I made you weaker and find out that aspect and if you ignore that which we've done superlative ly in Michigan in Detroit and in the nation you are weakening the nation its currency it's trust its confidence and as a market system you will fail it's official taxpayers are the big losers in that big auto bailout the Treasury Department announcing it will unload its remaining shares and General Motors by the end of the year the total cost to you more than eleven billion dollars that's on top of the billion plus we lost on rescuing Chrysler the administration said well this was never about turning a profit when all throughout the 2012 campaign and all throughout the 2009 selling of the auto bailout we were told oh this is going to be a net gain for taxpayers and taxpayers were able to recoup their investments into the banks they were able to recoup their investments into AI AG GM and Chrysler are the only two entities that weren't unable to result in a profit for the taxpayers so that that's the same thing that's happening with Detroit the city right now for all the same reasons that you know things were these promises were made you know very often knowing that they would never be fulfilled President Obama chose some very unfortunate words when he said we saved Detroit one of what he really meant was we save General Motors in Chrysler well I think it's ironic that people were saying well you need to bailout GM and Chrysler because you otherwise Detroit will go bankrupt and it turned out anyway you know save cronyism for two companies did not you know solve the long-term structural problems of Detroit both in competitiveness and in terms of the tax and regulatory system if the bailout saved Detroit then why is Detroit bankrupt today it simply makes it easier if you have the same forces in place to repeat the errors or to kick a can down the road and so now it's in worse shape than ever and no real prospects of reimbursing as a self-sufficient of confident entity I think the actual effect of the auto bailouts was kind of beside the point which is that this was just kind of economic industrial right which is they wanted to bail out a powerful interest group which was the UAW they wanted the government wanted to get their tentacles into these car companies in order to get them making green cars and sort of more entrench government environmental and other policies into them which they succeeded in doing in a variety of ways and then if the long term effect had also been to be able to help Detroit I think that would have been fine as we know one of the impacts of this is that you know a lot of jobs have ended up leaving Detroit anyway we bailed out these companies a lot of jobs left Detroit Detroit is weaker its tax base is reduced the firms that are there now many of them have been brought into Detroit by promises of tax moratoria 12-year tax no payments or special favors as long as there's a promise to create jobs which no one in ten years hence has bothered to monitor so we you know we had a an American city a whoa once the most prosperous city in the entire country that owes twenty billion dollars to retirees to former workers to its creditors and they can't pay it they can't pay twenty billion dollars that is a large chunk of that city's annual budget and they couldn't pay those bills our cities that relied on one industry you know auto industry Flint Michigan going through the same issue Highland Park going through the same issue Benton Harbor going for the same issue eCourse same issue one of our major issues in the city of Detroit is that we don't have lighting public lighting the public lighting is inefficient let me just say so we have 80,000 lights in the city of Detroit half of them around trash pickups horrendous they've had problems with response times with the fire department the fire department itself has got equipment that they can't even use it's just so outdated and broken-down that they don't have the adequate resources to do their jobs and what we've just seen is a long-term deterioration of the city that really wasn't going to be fixed without some sort of strong medicine like bankruptcy good afternoon and thank you for coming we are gratified with the court's ruling today regarding the city's eligibility to pursue a plan of adjustment under Chapter 9 of the federal bankruptcy code if the bankruptcy helps that'd be that'd be great you know sometimes you have to start over with a clean slate and I think that's what we need to do I don't know I hope they they could come out of it I know there's a big opportunity for the future in Detroit I got my fingers crossed well it kind of sucks for Detroit but I think they'll get back on their feet I feel bad about it but it has to be done oftentimes the only way back to stability is through drastic names you know I think it's a shame and I think you know it was bound to happen eventually but I think the trick and rebound I face well it's a process that had to be done it was it was long and awaking for so many years and I'm finally glad that it's finally trying to get its finances back in order but it really needs it in order for the city to survive I think it's a necessary step towards a better future for the city bankruptcy provides a potential way of writing that ship of right sizing the city and sort of getting everything the way that it's supposed to be so yes I do I do think we'll be better if they better off they went bankrupt earlier so they could have you know made these reforms that need to be made in the sooner Detroit filed bankruptcy the better in my opinion because you you sort of come to terms with this massive disconnect in their finances and the longer you put that off the more painful it's going to be you know we see that on virtually every level of government now and cities that refuse to to come to terms with that you know we see things like what happened in San Bernardino California or other towns in California that are just absolutely you know they're just crushed because for years they refused to address this this big disconnect so yeah so I think if they had done it sooner would have been better I mean if they had done it a decade ago it would have been better even though bankruptcy is obviously the right thing for Detroit in retrospect there's always very powerful special interest they're pushing against that and in particular the public employees unions I think accurately saw what was going to happen if Detroit did go into bankruptcy and as a result there was a lot of political blowback against it and of course it wasn't really until they got you know that the current manager Kevyn Orr who really pushed things to the wall in order to do that one of the problems with pensions generally is the political power of the public employee unions and whether that is trying to correct pensions outside bankruptcy or them trying to stave off a bankruptcy filing because they know what bankruptcy means to these pensions getting over that political hurdle ISM is a very difficult jump but as I said before we have a lot of work ahead of us and what I would ask both our creditors none of whom by the way filed an objection to our eligibility but equally important our labor partners to come forward with us and to take this opportunity even in the process of litigation and appeals to try to get at the sorely needed reform that this city has got to achieve so we can move forward into a new day the city really needs to put their business in order in order to do that they really can't rely on the federal government to handhold them to the process there has to be a 50/50 plus on it you hope that like the new mayor has no mayor wanna see the city do good we strong enough in making work the city itself it needs huge structural changes and you know we've got a mayor who's in prison again you know for for for corruption and he ruined the city in a time that he could have helped build it up and you've got to rid the city of that attitude of the city sort of falls within itself we're Detroiters are very territorial about Detroit it is it is one of the weirdest dynamics I can sit next to somebody at a Lions game or a baseball game and have a great conversation and they absolutely see the world differently in terms of what is good in terms of politics and policy and I try not to question people's heart or motives but it really has been one of the most frustrating things living in this area in seeing that people in Detroit going through this bankruptcy now there's still a vocal that may be a minority but a very vocal passionate group of people who don't see how the city has been run for the past 40 or 50 years as a problem that it's because Detroit hasn't got enough money from the federal government the state of Michigan hasn't you know given them their share back it really is one of the most frustrating things about living in this area and being all over the country like I have been it doesn't really exist like it does here in Detroit Detroit provides the warning of what happens if you go down the path where you're constantly making short-term political goals at the expense of the long-term viability of the city they're under external financial management and when that's gone given what we know remains in Detroit in terms of city council and mayor I don't see reform we clearly know that we have a financial challenge clearly no we have other issues that we have to deal with but you need to clearly know that we're working on and it's we're not taking them for granted again we're not just asking for you know the state to give us a ton of money about a blank check we want we want the opportunity to work on these issues and you see the city Detroit the condition that it's in right now this has been gaining for 4050 years and so you sing this generation a new generation of Detroiters who are stepping up and saying enough is enough I'm tired of seeing a city like this what can I do to help what can I do to turn it around because I don't want my kids or your kids having to go through the same thing that that we did the rains have been now handed over to a different generation of leaders and whether those leaders are in city government or within the community these are new folks who are looking to find ways to be a major player again on a national scale and not just a news clip a news blip we're we're ready and I'm excited about again what's what's coming you know but I'm even more excited about being a part of the reason why we're going to be back on the national scale and not just as a news clip but as that major comeback city I think what people need to know most about Detroit is that if it looks back a hundred years to what were the foundations that made this a great city and a premier example for what works in the United States as a premier economy not just in the world but in the history of the world there was the incentives the individual being able to follow one's dreams without a lot of taxation hindrance regulation that made no sense accountability that they were on their own if they made products and services that pleased the public they grew and others emulated their example and if we don't get back to that very fundamental facet of a free-market enterprise system a competitive system then yes you'll see more and more subsidies failure and that would be a crime Detroit is unsurpassed for opportunity and growth the friendliness of its people reaches out the warmth of the city the excitement of change the dedication to progress social spiritual cultural and material is equaled only by its 20th century vision the city on the straights welcomes you to share that vision as it continues to plan to build and yes to dream you

Channel: Mister Smith Media

Views: 370,482

Keywords: Bankruptcy (Crime Type), Detroit (City/Town/Village), Bailouts, Economy, Political Corruption (Crime Type), Barack Obama, George Bush, General Motors, Chrysler, Ford, Financial Crisis (Film Subject), Michigan, Auto Workers, United Auto Workers (Organization), bankrupt documentary, Ben Howe, bankrupt

Id: IuOEf-pNXUI

Length: 41min 18sec (2478 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 31 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/swimcool08]

they really like blaming the unions for things. i gave up after 20 minutes, because they basically said if detroit wasn't unionized, it wouldnt have happened. while the UAW might have gotten greedy, i am very sure they were not the main reason, and should not be blamed for detroit being what it is now. they also never show numbers or back up their claims.

[u/God_of_Libtards]

53 Years of Democrat mayors will destroy any city.

[u/aoeuuauoeuoaeeua]

Funny how the foreign car manufacturers in the 'right to work' states wouldn't hire the american laid off workers. "spoiled" they trained their own staff from scratch.