Motown vanishes

Just as it's too late for a bailout to help the auto industry, it's too late to help Detroit. It's the first major American city that could go bankrupt. The Chicago Tribune lays out the basket case. Money Quote:

The median price of a home sold in Detroit in December was $7,500, according to Realcomp, a listing service.

Not $75,000. Remove a zero—it's seven thousand five hundred dollars, substantially less than the lowest-price car on the new-car market.

But as the domestic auto industry, the city's principal private-sector employer and founding corporate father, seeks a financial bailout from Washington, formerly whispered remarks about the prospect of the nation's 11th-largest city being the first major American city to go bankrupt are now publicly discussed.