Detroit files for bankruptcy

The city of Detroit, which is $18.5 billion in the red, has filed for bankruptcy protection. CNN's Poppy Harlow explains.

交通枢纽，曾经的世界汽车工业之都，美国第四大城市。一个世纪后，走向衰落。底特律寻求破产保护以重组其超过180亿美元的负债，这将是美国规模最大的城市破产案。分析认为，底特律遭遇破产窘境主要原因有三，一是人口急剧下降导致税收大幅下降；二是市政项目支出依然庞大；三是金融危机的影响较大。

This is CNN Breaking News.

Welcome back to the lead now. Some breaking news. Individuals go bankrupt, business do it too all the time, but entire cities? Well we must be talking about Detroit. Owing more than 18 billion dollars in debt, “the Motor City”officially filed for bankruptcy just moments ago. I wanna bring out Poppy HARLOW. Poppy, how does the bankruptcy work for an entire city?

While it has been approved by a judge through a Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing, but this is, this is enormous, this is the largest municipality ever in history of this country, Jake, to file for bankruptcy. I’ve just got off the phone with Bill N. He is the press secretary for Kevin Orr who is the financial emergency manager in Detroit. He * took control of the city back in March when the governor of Michigan put him in charge. And Bill N told me at 4:06 pm today the governor along with the emergency manager of Detroit filed officially for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection. This is a little sooner than we’ve expected. We were hearing ramblings that could happen tomorrow, but it came today. As you said, this is the city that is 18 billion dollars in debt. This has been decades in the making. Why did this happen? A lot of reasons, the population here have been declining, precipitously got a city of 1.5 million people in 1950 to 700,000 today. That means fewer people playing taxes, the downfall of the auto industry, very poor tax collection, corruption in government. So many things have added up to this. But what this is going to mean now is that if they are approved and have an exit from bankruptcy, it gives them the power to pay their creditors back of a lot less, to cut down pensions and healthcare benefits for city workers, though it gonna hurt, but it also means that Detroit can eventually, the hope is get back on their feet, Jack.