Debt That Makes And Breaks U S Cities | Destin Jenkins #MajorityReport

Emma hosts Destin Jenkins, assistant professor of history at Stanford University, to discuss his recent book The Bonds of Inequality: Debt and the Making of the American City, to discuss the origins of his scholarship, namely how he was able to identify the “brick and mortar of inequality” through the 2008 financial crisis and the bankruptcy of the city of Detroit. They then discuss the concepts of emergency managers and control board structures, and how instances of these leadership structures perpetuating, from the Flint water crisis to the bankruptcy in New York City in the 1970s, show how they served to shield municipal financing from the scrutiny of any sort of democratic or popular input. They then touch on how exactly municipal debt structures work, who decides who is worthy of debt and who isn’t, as well as the prototypes to what former President Trump referred to as “opportunity zones”: federal projects that valued economic growth and opportunity over any semblance of infrastructural benefit to the community. They then get into some specific examples, namely that of San Francisco, and how there are some misconceptions as to the city’s reputation as a progressive bohemia sullied by the influences of Big Tech. Jenkins runs through how, due to the way many of the infrastructural upgrades and projects manifested themselves, San Francisco’s projects mostly affected a wealthier commuters into the city as opposed to a citizen of the city itself. They wrap up the conversation by re-emphasizing how something like budgeting and municipal debt can seem value neutral, when in fact these structural issues like redlining, environmental racism, and others directly stem from these allocations of resources by unelected bureaucrats.

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And we are joined Now by Dustin Jenkins, historian, and professor at Stanford University, in his book the bonds of inequality debt and the making of the American city. Dustin thanks so much for being here today. Thanks for having me. It's good to be here with you. of course. So your book really zeros in on the mid-20th century cities in America. And just how the construction of those cities essentially codified the inequality there. And your title says plainly the bonds of inequality. Which I thought was you know well well done. Because your focus is very much on Municipal financing and how that structure kind of shaped our cities today. How did you come to this topic? Yeah, there are a few kinds of Milestones. The first is the 2008 financial crisis. I think for so many of us interested in this kind of progressive politics, for me at least, I was thinking about the Financial processes of financial institutions. And so 2008 is this kind of Fallout. Of course, it dovetails eventually with the movement for black lives. So basically trying to think about the brick-and-mortar of inequality. And so from that point on right within that context, the Detroit bankruptcy of 2013 was huge for me. Because here we start to think about a predominantly black City then think about bankruptcy. And who's going to take a haircut who will receive be paid in full on their various obligations. And what is the obligation of a city like Detroit to its long-term residents? And all of that stuff was wrapped up in Municipal Bond Finance.