The sun has clearly set on the American manufacturing empire. Forty years ago or so, in fact. Now we are a nation of actuaries and lawyers and architects. This knowledge will not conjure up a hot meal when one is needed, but the beknighted metropolis of Detroit has far more needs than that, and some help is coming from an unlikely place, namely students at the College for Creative Studies, where a cadre of design majors are working on clothing intended specifically for the city’s more than 20,000 homeless. See? Artists are useful. Chew on that for awhile, Wall Street. (Jennifer Conlin, The New York Times)