© Minyanville
Motor City.
When you're involved in a barter, you're usually looking to at least break even. Those with enough savvy can even manage to trade up. Or, in the exceptional, world news-making case, a dealer with forethought, time and can-do spirit in spades can swap a plastic office supply for a home.
Like 25-year-old Kyle MacDonald who -- after twelve months and fourteen transactions that included a fish-shaped pen, a Coleman camp stove, a Cintas cube van, and Alice Cooper -- managed to turn a single
red paperclip into a two-story 1920s farmhouse.
It also makes the news when an exchange goes the other way around. Not exactly as devastating as losing a piece of property to a piece of plastic, but what about
swapping a $96,000 house for a $6,750 minivan?
In what may be one of the most telling scenarios about the underwater state of the Detroit real estate market -- a market so bad that Habitat for Humanity is having to
turn down donation offers from home owners unable to sell -- a 36-year-old mother of six let go of her four-bedroom, three-bathroom home in Russell Woods, one of the city's better neighborhoods.
What for? A 2006 Chevrolet Uplander with 85,000 miles and a Kelley Blue Book value of between $5,000 and $8,500.
Comment: Honor, Integrity, Courage, Moral, Service, Heroes.. actually, no. Now you see them treated as the cannon fodder the Government considers them to be.
"Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy." - Henry Kissinger