"I know many will see this as a low point in the city's history,"
- Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, a Republican
The city of Detroit, the cradle of the U.S. automobile assembly line and a symbol of industrial strength, formally filed for bankruptcy, becoming the biggest U.S. city in history to take such a drastic measure. The decision was made after decades of decline left the city too poor to pay billions of dollars owed to bondholders, current city workers and even retired cops. Many of the local factories that used to be a working place for thousands workers and which used to dot the city, moved to suburbs, other nation's states or even moved their production to such countries as China and Brazil, in order to implement cost-cutting measures, while the whole auto industry has switched to getting faster and less expensive.
Kevyn Orr, Detroit's current emergency manager, decide to take the decision after negotiations with broker of a deal between the city's bondholders and its pension funds failed. The Governor has also stressed out the whole city is collapsing, as citizens wait for 58 minutes for police to respond to calls, compared with 11 minutes average among the country. In addition to that approximately 78,000 buildings are abandoned. This is not an issue of a concrete federal state, but for the whole country, which is likely to weigh on the activity in manufacturing sector.
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