Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Averton.

This day July 18th, 2013, the city of Detroit filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, the largest

municipal bankruptcy filing in U.S. history estimated at 18 to 20 billion dollars. I like maybe many of the rest of

you remember this story and I also remember my reaction which was maybe like yours

wait a minute a city can just file for bankruptcy and well it does that

when it goes bankrupt.

And as we'll learn, a city goes bankrupt in many of the same ways that a person or a business

goes bankrupt.

Roughly speaking, they run out of money.

We are an economics podcast now if you can't tell.

But here to discuss, as always, are Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of

Wellesley. Hello there. Hello Jody. Hey there. All right so someone rescued me

from my very bad economics description of what it means to go bankrupt.

So, Jody, on this day in 2013, everyone in Detroit had to step outside and shout, I declare bankruptcy

at the same time.

Oh, is that how it works out?

But you know, I mean, bankruptcy is like, on one hand,

a very complicated thing on the other hand not that complicated in the

sense of it's what happens when you can no longer pay your obligations and it

gives you a chance to basically hit pause and restructure your debt.

So let's talk about that first part of the equation,

...