The simplest solution, a state bail-out, is tricky. Both the governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, and the head of the state’s House Appropriations Committee, Chuck Moss, argue that yet another infusion of cash will not solve Detroit’s underlying problems. To prove his point, the governor recently reminded citizens that the city has borrowed $600m since 2005 just to get by. It is also planning, with some state support, to issue $137m in bonds in order to refinance its debt and create cashflow that will allow it to totter on until the end of the financial year.

Detroit’s financial problems have been building up for decades. City revenues have been hit by the collapse of manufacturing, declining property values and the flight of better-off people to the suburbs. At the same time, the cost of servicing a still-sprawling city has not shrunk in proportion. Like many of America’s struggling municipalities, Detroit is paying pensions, entitlements and salaries far larger than it can afford.

Without new loans, the city will run out of cash in mid-May. The state is pushing it hard to sort out its structural deficit. Late last year it began a financial review of Detroit which was the legal prelude to bringing in an unelected emergency manager, as Michigan has done in several other distressed cities.

Mr Snyder has said he would rather not use these laws in Detroit, and there is reason to believe him. Not only have they never been applied to a city this size, but the takeover of a black city (with an all-black mayor and council) by a white governor has become racially charged. At one recent public meeting the crowd was unruly. “Before we let you take over our city,” one activist shouted, “we will burn it down!”