State-appointed emergency manager Kevyn Orr on Thursday July 18,2013 asked a federal judge permission to place the city into Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection.If approved, the filing would allow Orr to liquidate city assets to satisfy a host of creditors and city pensioners lined up to recoup losses from bad bond investments and unpaid contracts.A number of factors - most notably steep population and tax base falls - have been blamed on Detroit's tumble toward insolvency.
It also amounts to the largest municipal bankruptcy filing in US history in terms of debt.
Not everyone agrees how much Detroit owes, but Kevyn D. Orr, the Emergency Manager who was appointed by Snyder to resolve the city's financial problems, has said the debt is likely to be $18 billion and perhaps as much as $20 billion
The debt in Detroit dwarfs that of Jefferson County, Ala., which had been the nation's largest municipal bankruptcy, having filed in 2011 with about $4 billion in debt.
Note
Detroit expanded at a stunning rate in the first half of the 20th century with the arrival of the automobile industry, and then shrank away in recent decades at a similarly remarkable pace
A city of 1.8 million in 1950, it is now home to 700,000 people, as well as to tens of thousands of abandoned buildings, vacant lots and unlit streets.
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