Detroit is beautiful-though you probably have to be a child of the industrial Midwest, like me, to see it. As you may have heard, the city is in trouble. At the end of the 2013 fiscal year, Detroit had a balance sheet with liabilities of $9.05 billion. The city‘s emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, estimates long-term debt at $18 billion.
balance
sheet：资产负债表
liabilities：负债额，债务
But I know how to fix Detroit, because it reminds me of another favorite
place, *-two things so opposite that they evoke each other the way any
Kardashian is a reminder that you love home and mother.
*‘s per
capita GDP is among the highest in the world. But it was once a worse mess than
Detroit. Devastated by Japanese occupation, the British colony‘s population had
declined from 1.6 million in 1941 to 600,000 by 1945. Then, after the 1949
* victory on the mainland, a million refugees arrived. Most of them were
penniless. Britain‘s Labor government was penniless, too. Maybe * could
have gone into Chapter 9. But who would have been the bankruptcy judge? Chairman
Mao?
devastated：毁坏，摧毁
penniless：一贫如洗，身无分文
Instead * had the good fortune to get John (later Sir John)
Cowperthwaite, a young official sent out to push the colony‘s economy toward
recovery. ‘I did very little,‘ he once said. ‘All I did was to try to prevent
some of the things that might undo it.‘
Such as taxes. Even now, Hong
Kong has no sales tax; no VAT; no taxes on capital gains, interest income or
earnings outside *; no import or export duties; and a top personal
income-tax rate of 15%.
Cowperthwaite was financial secretary from 1961
to 1971, *‘s period of fastest economic growth. Sir John, however,
wouldn‘t allow collection of economic statistics for fear they‘d lead to
political meddling. Some statistics nonetheless: During Cowperthwaite‘s tenure,
*‘s exports grew by an average of 13.8% a year, industrial wages doubled
and the number of households in extreme poverty shrank from half to
16%.
medding：干预，瞎管
With that in mind, I was talking to a friend in Michigan. We discussed
Detroit‘s poverty, crime, depopulation and insolvency.
depopulation：人口减少，灭绝
insolvency：破产，倒闭
‘Make it into *,‘ I said,
‘with polite Canadians next door instead of a scary
Politburo.‘
‘Someone‘s way ahead of you,‘ he told me.
Real-estate
developer Rod Lockwood wants investors to buy Detroit‘s derelict 982-acre Belle
Isle Park and persuade the U.S. to allow Belle Isle a territorial status like
Guam and all the tax benefits of *-with easier access to Red Wings
games.
derelict：被遗弃的，玩忽职守的
Belle Isle has room for only about 50,000 people and just one
bridge to the city. It might seem more of a gated community than an overseas
possession. So Mr. Lockwood has expanded his proposal to include 15 square miles
of Detroit‘s distressed east side. I think Mr. Lockwood should try for the
city‘s entire 143 square miles.
Could it really work? Mr. Lockwood took
me on a city tour with Larry Mongo, owner of Café D‘Mongo‘s Speakeasy, a popular
hangout for Detroit‘s hipsters. (Hipster scenes tend to spring up anywhere cheap
real estate abuts young people, and just up Woodward Avenue, at Wayne State,
there are 31,000 of them.)
hangout：住所，故意泄露
hipsters：时髦人群
abut：邻接，毗邻
Detroit‘s
industrial ruins are picturesque, like crumbling Rome in an 18th-century
etching. The tragedy is the desert of blue-collar neighborhoods. Almost every
home is burned, a crack house, a cellar hole or stripped of all that‘s
salvageable.
picturesque：独特的，别致的
crumbling：破碎的，皱纹，崩溃的
cellar：地窖
salvageable：可抢救的，可利用的
* economics would mean curtailing
U.S. welfare and benefit programs, but Detroiters seem to have found the holes
in the social safety net already. Forty-four percent are living below poverty
level. They could, however, benefit from the jobs and commerce in a vibrant,
tax-free * economy.
curtail：缩短，剥夺特权
vibrant：振动的，响亮的
Amid the desolation, we came across a tidy bungalow-lawn mowed, sidewalk
swept, flower beds planted, and bars on every downstairs door and window. Mr.
Mongo said, ‘The old folks are still living there.‘ A lifetime was spent paying
the mortgage and making improvements on a place that now isn‘t worth the $8,500
it costs to demolish a house in Detroit.
desolation：荒芜，忧伤，废墟
bungalow：平房，小屋
mowed：割草
mortgage：抵押
demolish：拆除，破坏
Christopher *s, senior pastor at the
1,500-member Evangelical Ministries Church in Detroit, said a concept like Belle
Isle ‘would initially be greeted with hostility because of the widespread
suffering in Detroit. A ‘Wealth Haven‘ would cause a war on the middle class.‘
However, he said, ‘If you‘re talking about the whole city...If Belle Isle is the
start of a plan, I‘d support it. A lot of clergy would get behind it.‘ Pastor
*s said, ‘If there were a real plan to encourage jobs and wealth, the
welfare problem would solve itself.‘
clergy：牧师，僧侣
Granted, turning Detroit into * wouldn‘t be simple. I talked to
Chris Crosby, a municipal bond analyst at Raymond James. He listened patiently
as I explained the advantages of a city that would actually be worth something
to prospective municipal bondholders. Here is the main part of the rest of our
conversation.
municipal：市政的，地方自治的
Me: ‘Is this feasible?
Mr. Crosby: ‘No.‘
The political
barriers are too high-politicians don‘t like to give up power. Of course,
politicians also give up power in a bankruptcy, which is why Mr. Crosby likes
Detroit‘s bankruptcy. It will be so politically painful that other big cities
won‘t try it.
Detroit‘s politics are already painful. Former Mayor Kwame
Kilpatrick is serving 28 years in *. Local joke: ‘What‘s the difference
between Chicago and Detroit?‘
‘Chicago got Michael Corleone. Detroit got
Fredo.‘
Plus introducing *‘s sharp-clawed wolverine species of
capitalism into the Wolverine State would require a bold stroke from Washington.
It‘s hard to imagine anything bold from this Congress of head-butting
pro-wrestler wannabes.
wrestler：摔跤选手，搏斗者
wannabe：想达到目标的人
But something needs to be done. Sen. Rand Paul
weighed in with a Dec. 6 speech at the Detroit Economic Club. (The economy may
be gone, but we Midwesterners are ‘joiners,‘ so there‘s still a club.) He said
he‘d introduce legislation creating ‘Economic Freedom Zones‘ with personal and
business tax rates of 5%.
Anyway, Detroit is broke. And so was *.
In 1949 the colony had just one asset. * owned *-all the land
except what was under the Anglican cathedral. * sold leaseholds, first
for a little, then for a lot.
cathedral：大教堂
leasehold：租赁的
And Detroit owns Detroit, or a very large chunk of it. In 2011 more than
half the owners of Detroit‘s 305,000 properties failed to pay property taxes.
Detroit has approximately 40 square miles of vacant land.
If people
cannot be convinced by reason, maybe they can be convinced by greed. Forty
square miles equals 1.1 billion square feet. One recent estimate put *
land prices at more than $1,300 per square foot. Translated into Detroit, that‘s
$1.4 trillion.
So my investment advice: go short on Manhattan penthouses
and long on empty lots in Detroit.
penthouses：阁楼，顶层公寓