Michigan: Worries Automaker Meltdown Could Doom State
According to an AP Report:
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A quarter-century ago, Michigan's monthly unemployment rate hit 17 percent and so many laid-off workers left the state that bumper stickers asked, "Will the last one leaving Michigan please turn out the lights?"
Fears of a replay now have residents feeling even gloomier in this hard-hit industrial state where the Detroit Three are headquartered.
Executives with General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC have so far been unable to persuade Congress to provide billions of dollars in loans to keep them afloat.
Even if they get federal help, domestic automakers likely will shrink further, something Michigan has had to deal with for years.
Since 2000, the number of Michigan workers making transportation equipment has dropped from 342,000 to 175,000, a decrease of nearly 50 percent.
"Michigan has been bearing the brunt of these adjustments for eight years now. Unfortunately for the state, things are going from bad to worse now, because the financial woes are being laid over the structural changes," said Thomas Klier, senior economist with the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago. "So it's a real double whammy."
Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson said communities and schools would be devastated without the automakers. The county northwest of Detroit — one of the nation's most affluent — is home to Chrysler's sprawling headquarters, a GM campus and a slew of auto plants and suppliers that employ more than 40,000 people.
"If GM or Chrysler goes under, or both go under," Patterson predicted, "it will be a nuclear winter. We'll lose tens of thousands of jobs."
The state already is in the top 10 for home foreclosures and suffering from bad publicity with its largest city, Detroit, embroiled in sex and spending scandals....click to continue.
