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Would you mind if I share an article from the 1970's?I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the event that you're referring to. Could you be more specific?
Here it is
It is an event that when steel corporation closed up their factory in Youngstown, the community and workers, along with the religious proposed reopening the factory. They asked the FED for loans ($15 millions) and they would improve the factory by upgrading it.
But the Fed said no, and by saying no, they prevented an alternative pathway of saving the middle class industrial class, thereby keeping the whole of the middle class intact.
Even in this article proves that it could keep jobs in the community and INCREASE profitability.
From the article:
The Center for Economic Alternative's report said the issue in Youngstwwn is "not simply a steel industry problem" - the steel industry has shut down many plants in the last few years in the face of foreign competition and for other reasons - "but ... also an issue of urban decay facing many parts of the country in an era of slower economic growth."
"The justification is not the commercial and economic advantage of one community alone, but the need throughout the nation to develop new strategies to preserve jobs, increase productivity, test new technologies and help urban communities facing economic decay."
Specifically, the report called for creation of a federal task force to work with the ecumentical coalition. The task force and the local leaders would work out detailed plans for making a national showcase of the reopened plant.
The report also asked the administration to authorize - when and if the fledging steel firm gets started - federal guarantees of $300 million in bank loans for the plant.
The study called for an "immediate" federal grant of $15 million to the ecumenical coalition, which would use the money to buy the closed-down sections of Youngstown's Campbell Works form the Lykes Corp,'s Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. and the LTV Corp.'s Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., which are in the process of being merged.
Most of the grant would revert to the federal government "if significant progress is not made toward achieving the national demonstration project over the next 18 months," the report said.
It recommended that the government "seriously consider" the plant as the site of a national research program in new steel technology.
Gar Alperovitz, co-director of the national center, said the reopened steel company could be profitable if it sold 1.4 million tons of steel a year commercially and 100,000 tons to the federal government.
The center's report offers four options on how to finance the project, which it said would cost $525 million over eight years. Most of the money would come from loans. A major assumption of the study's favorite option is that $50 million would be raised as equity - $10 million of which would come from Mahoning Valley residents.
The Rev. Edward Stanton, staff director of the ecumenical coalition, said that local residents, businesses, churches and labor unions have opened 4.065 "Save Our Valley" accounts totaling $4 million in local banks. The accounts indicate strong community support for the new steel company, Stanton said.