The Parable of Rust

The Parable of Rust tells the story of the boom, bust, and recovery of the fictitious factory town of Rust and three generations of the family which builds, owns, sells, and re-acquires the factory, or at least what remains of it after corporate raiders lay off half off the workforce and then flip it to a conglomerate which mismanages it into failure. The failure of the factory sets off cascading financial crisis, exacerbated by the greed, incompetence, and duplicity of its biggest bank. By historical quirk, Rust happens to be an independent state, a Liechtenstein on the Great Lakes, and therefore has at city-state scale a full suite of national institutions which prove incapable of containing the crisis. Rust is forced to swallow its pride and seek a bailout from Washington to stave off total collapse, but receives only subsistence-level support. With Rust completely knocked on its back, its mayor reaches out to the exiled scion of the factory family to return. He agrees, and must find a way to get Rust back on its feet.