Special Report: Is America the sick man of the globe?

[NNN0LHI]

http://in.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6BF28720101216

By Nick Carey

SAGINAW, Michigan | Thu Dec 16, 2010 9:25pm IST

SAGINAW, Michigan (Reuters) - Not long ago, if you wanted steak for lunch at the Texan Restaurant, less than two minutes drive from the Nexteer Automotive assembly plant, you had to be in the door by 11 o'clock in the morning. If you arrived any later, you joined a long line with other laggards and waited for a table to open up.

With noon fast approaching on a recent day, however, only a handful of customers sat in one of the restaurant's two sections and the other was closed.

Asked how the decline in the U.S. auto industry has affected the local economy, Tammy Maynard, a waitress here since 1988, waved a hand around at the empty tables and said: "You're looking at it, sugar." snip


This is the point of the story where many Americans typically glaze over because they see Michigan as a long-standing financial basket case of a state thanks to the shrinking U.S. auto industry. But the problem is that the broad decline of the manufacturing sector that has been underway in this country for decades now may threaten not just the long-term health of the economy but also the living standards of all but the wealthiest Americans.

[villager]

1. unrecc'd (!) by one the apologists-for-the-elites, apparently...

I guess I shouldn't be shocked by what gets "unrecc'd" around here anymore...

[ananda]

2. Excellent article.

nt

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. I still remember when that monicker was used for Turkey

the sick man of Europe...