Credit rating agencies are not hands-off investigators or passive reporters of economic prospects. They are ideologically driven activists who meet regularly with municipal governments in the United States and around the world to ensure capital’s reproduction. In New York, credit rating agencies rewarded the city for granting tax abatements and developers in the 1980s, and for reducing benefits for government workers in the 1990s. In Detroit, despite the signs of an impending collapse of the city’s primary industries, municipal credit ratings rose during the 1980s because its government was willing to pursue gentrification as a planning strategy. In the early 1990s, Philadelphia was rewarded for a program of government shrinkage, municipal employee wage freezes and health care cuts.
Samuel Stein, Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State
