Mixed feelings surround the 100th birthday celebrations enacted for General Motors in Flint, Michigan. The company that essentially put Flint on the map has also left it economically depressed and largely collapsing. The whole city is tied to GM, who employed 80,000 workers in Flint during the 1970s. These days, however, unemployment in and around Flint is 11.1 percent, the highest among metropolitan areas in Michigan, the state with the highest unemployment in the nation, according to the most recent federal figures.
See "A Big Party Without the Guest of Honor", Catrin Einhorn, The New York Times, July 17, 2008