Detroit has become ground zero for what is quickly becoming known as the American Nightmare. Hundreds of thousands of people in the Detroit metropolitan area are desperate for work, and there is no help in sight. The Detriot News is reporting that while the "official" unemployment rate in Detroit is 27 percent, the reality is that it should really be about 45 percent using a broader definition of unemployment.  And according to the Detroit News report, that 45 percent figure does not even include those who gave up searching for a job more than a year ago.  That would add about another 100,000 people to the unemployment figure in Detroit.

In other words, Detroit is a complete and total mess.

Even the mayor of Detroit acknowledges that the unemployment situation is a lot worse than official figures indicate.

At a jobs forum in Washington D.C. earlier this month, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing said that the unemployment rate in Detroit is actually "closer to 50 percent."

So what has happened in Detroit?

Detroit used to be the mecca of auto manufacturing.  But over the past couple decades factory after factory has been closed only to be reopened elsewhere in the world.

Now those jobs are gone forever.  For millions of people in Michigan, the American Dream has become the American Nightmare.

But what is going on in Detroit is just a microcosm of what is going on in the United States as a whole.

For decades everyone has stood by and watched as millions of jobs have been shipped off to China, India, Mexico and dozens of other nations.

Millions of Americans were all too glad to scoop up products made by slave laborers in places like China for a few pennies less than products made in America.

U.S. politicians were all too glad to sign one-sided trade agreements with other nations that closed the doors of other nations to American products while opening the doors of the United States to a flood of cheap imports.

Now the manufacturing base in the United States has been decimated and it is not coming back.

Millions of jobs have been lost forever.

Now blue collar workers all over the U.S. find themselves in direct competition with millions of workers in China and India and Mexico who are making only a small fraction of what they make.

How in the world can they compete?

The truth is that this is the end of the world for the blue collar worker of the United States.

There will be no recovery for factory workers.

In fact what we are seeing in Detroit will ultimately spread across the U.S.

The foolishness of decades of bad policies in Washington D.C. is now starting to hit home.

So pay close attention to what is happening in Detroit.

It will be hitting your hometown soon enough.