Detroit Insolvent

Not much of a surprise here. This simply can not go on forever - the madness of insolvency on a local, state and national level is absurd! Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore & New Orleans are 3rd world interchangeable.

Detroit's Finances Poised to go From Bad, to Worse, to Insolvency

The Motor City is running out of cash. "In a nutshell, the city is insolvent," Joe Harris, the former chief financial officer under one-time interim Mayor Ken Cockrel Jr., told The Detroit News today. "The next few weeks will determine if they will survive."

Are you listening, AFSCME?

Audits of Detroit's books show a city borrowing to pay its everyday bills, ignoring deadbeats who owe unpaid taxes and hoarding overpayments by others because, well, City Hall needs the money. Imagine the uproar if Citibank booked a refund on your credit card because it needed to amass a stash.

Mayor Dave Bing can journey all he wants to Lansing to repiar relationships with the Legislature and to Washington to lobby for federal dollars from the Obama White House. In fact, he should -- if only because everyone else seems to be. But the mounting evidence -- and audits are just that, doubters -- is that Detroit's financial health is slipping from critical to grave.

Meaning Detroit's hottest topic of the new year is likely to be who Gov. Jennifer Granholm would appoint emergency financial manager of Detroit, which would be the largest to be American city to fall into receivership. Given recent political chaos and the deep historic resentment about heavy-handed Lansing involvement in Detroit's affairs, my guess is the guv would prefer that emergency financial manager and Mayor Bing to be the same person -- which would require a change in state law, I'm told.

Wouldn't be surprised if one of the mayor's unspoken reasons for working Lansing this week was to lay groundwork for legislation that would make him the emergency financial manager, if it becomes necessary.