Well the big Detroit bankruptcy deal is is largely signed off by the major players, with a few odds and ends to be approved or voted on. Not M or P at all in general, but the whole thing is in front of the Judge, going through the minor player’s claims first, starting with the crazy people.
And the sideshow of freaks is long since over. The Main event starts today, and it’s gonna be one hell of an interesting show. Judge Rhodes will become one of the most powerful men in the country over the next few weeks, providing a new template for how messes on the 18-20 billion dollar scale get fixed.
It seems like the only people who are seriously unhappy are the major bondholders, who lent billions of dollars to Detroit, despite knowing damn well that they wouldn’t be able to pay it back. Feh. I have no sympathy for them. I hope the judge approves the plan so we can get this mess over with.
Do you remember the idiots who used to run the place? It was screamingly obvious they were incompetant, and that Detroit going broke was a question of “when” not “if”. To my mind, any bondholder who bought a Detroit bond in the last decade or two was basically dabbling in penny stocks.
Well the bankruptcy deal was approved by the Federal judge today. Not a huge surprise, he was letting people know when he was unhappy during the negotiations and trial. So it was just an official seal of approval, but a major event regardless.
So Detroit will be exiting Bankruptcy in a matter of weeks, and the whole thing was accomplished with far less gnashing of teeth(at least publicly) that I had expected. So with finances the most independently reviewed and approved in a hundred years(and hopefully continuing over-site by big daddy Fed on whatever goes on) and the investments of Gilbert and Illitch and others, there may be reason for real optimism for the Future of the city.
Of course there is no on-off switch for the crime and blight that cover vast portions of the city, That will take a long dedicated effort, concentrated in small areas at any one time to fix, and a lot of innocent people who got screwed by a deteriorating city, with unsaleable houses will die of old age(or crime) before the wave reaches far enough to help them, even at best projections.
there weren’t too many options for bondholders to consider since it was clear Detroit had no money to pay them back and they weren’t going to be given the DIA.
Last I heard, they said this was a gas explosion. Someone was seen running from the house, with his clothes on fire, just before the exposion. Speculation is that it was a scrapper. In which case, I say too bad he didn’t get blasted across the street, like that poor homeowner in Royal Oak did a year or two ago.
ETA: I’ve read that Tyree Guyton, the guy behind the Heidelburg Project, thinks that the fires at his houses are being set by someone who’s hoping to buy up the land. Make of that what you will. I’ve always assumed that it was one of the local residents who thinks the houses are eyesores.