Welcome in everybody, in everybody. It's the Economic Special. There's a lot of numbers so you can quit now or you can get up to speed.

So today we're going to start locally in Detroit at the morgue where there they lie.

As pretty as you please, stacked in the refriger refrigerators row upon row like so much

bread on a baker's shelf. The dry bones are stored separately in a nearby pantry.

But there are a few takers for the wares on display at the Wayne County morgue in Midtown Detroit.

They are the remains of 269 human beings who go unclaimed, unwanted, and oftentimes unknown.

They are in their destitution, a macabreometer, not only the economic times we live in, but

also a sad reminder of how cold and strange the human

heart has grown. 96 of them are skeletons and quite a few of them have been

there for years explained Bill Casper, the chief investigator at the

medical examiner's office to me.

These are the unfortunates whose remains remain unknown, people who were found in various states of misadventure and decomposition.

But you never know with today's DNA technology, said Casper, he's a big-hearted death detective. He'd rather have a body on the shelf to give to a family

rather than return a pile of dust and earn. So that leaves another 173 full flesh and bone bodies on ice, the overflow handled by a tractor

trailer size refrigerator in the back parking lot of the morgue.

Wayne County had the very same problem of overcrowding back during the Great Recession

when Wall Street collapsed and the city of Detroit went broke.

To ease that pressure, the state started allowing its county coroners to cremate unclaimed bodies,

thus providing a more dignified ending to a life than having one's corpse perpetually

rearranged like a withered cucumber and a vegetable crisper.

Gradually things improved at the morgue until the economy went sour again and once again

bodies are stacking up another unmeasured consequence of biodynamics.

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