Solyndra was just the appetizer. Earlier today, in what will come as a surprise only to members of the administration, the company which proudly held the rights to the world's largest solar power project, the hilariously named Solar Trust of America ("STA"), filed for bankruptcy. And while one could say that the company's epic collapse is more a function of alternative energy politics in Germany, where its 70% parent Solar Millennium AG filed for bankruptcy last December, what is relevant is that last April STA was the proud recipient of a $2.1 billion conditional loan from the Department of Energy, incidentally the second largest loan ever handed out by the DOE's Stephen Chu. That amount was supposed to fund the expansion of the company's 1000 MW Blythe Solar Power Project in Riverside, California. From the funding press release, "This project construction is expected to create over 1,000 direct jobs in Southern California, 7,500 indirect jobs in related industries throughout the United States, and more than 200 long-term operational jobs at the facility itself. It will play a key role in stimulating the American economy,” said Uwe T. Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Solar Trust of America and Executive Chairman of project development subsidiary Solar Millennium, LLC." Instead, what Solar Trust will do is create lots of billable hours for bankruptcy attorneys (at $1,000/hour), and a good old equity extraction for the $22 million DIP lender, which just happens to be NextEra Energy Resources, LLC, another "alternative energy" company which last year received a $935 million loan courtesy of the very same (and now $2.1 billion poorer) Department of Energy, which is also a subsidiary of public NextEra Energy (NEE), in the process ultimately resulting in yet another transfer of taxpayer cash to NEE's private shareholders.
As Bloomberg notes: "The company joins Energy Conversion Devices Inc., a U.S. solar manufacturer that suspended production last year; LSP Energy LP, the owner of a natural-gas-fired power plant in Mississippi; Ener1 Inc., maker of lithium-ion batteries for plug-in electric cars; solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC; and energy storage company Beacon Power Corp. (BCONQ) in bankruptcy."
And so central planning fails again, and again, and again, and again. But it sure will be better with the centrally planned monetary (and in the absence of a working Congress - also fiscal) policy. Because this time it really will be different.
Solar Trust of America and several affiliates filed for protection from creditors with the U.S. bankruptcy court in Delaware. It estimated to have as much as $10 million of assets, and between $50 million and $100 million of liabilities.
Blythe is about 220 miles (354 km) southeast of Los Angeles.
"We have been working with Solar Trust of America for a couple of years in getting this project going," David Lane, Blythe's city manager, said in an interview. "Although the project is not in the city limits, we are the only city within 100 miles. My sense is that with the large investment in what was to have been the world's largest solar power plant, someone somewhere will buy it and build it."
At least someone's reputation will be tarnished as a result of this latest epic failure of the Obama administration to misallocate capital:
Solar Millennium said it has been sued by former Chief Executive Utz Claassen over public statements by company representatives that he claims have damaged his reputation and left him unable to find a job. Solar Millennium said the lawsuit would not directly affect its insolvency proceedings.
Two people, however, who won't be humiliated at all are California Governor Jerry Brown, and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, who reprise the role of Joe Biden, last seen praising not only MF Global's Jon Corzine, but that other epic administration failure: Solyndra. Watch them praise the groundbreaking for the Blythe facility.
Epic embarrassment. And not even a full year ago.
But before that, of course, we had the funding of the plant with a $2.1 billion loan guarantee from the US Department of Energy, the second largest ever, smaller only than Georgia Power's $8.33 billion loan guarantee.
From the DOE:
U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced the offer of a conditional commitment for a $2.1 billion loan guarantee to support Units 1 and 2 of the Blythe Solar Power Project, sponsored by Solar Trust of America, LLC. The concentrating solar thermal power plant includes two units comprising a combined 484 megawatt (MW) generating capacity, an eight-mile transmission line and associated infrastructure. The project will be built adjacent to the City of Blythe in Riverside County, California and is expected to create over 1,000 construction jobs and approximately 80 operations jobs. The plant is estimated to avoid over 710,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually, equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions from over 123,000 vehicles.
“Loan guarantees play an important role in facilitating the development and deployment of innovative technologies at massive scope and scale,” said Secretary Chu. “Continued investments like this project make solar power more efficient and cost competitive while creating thousands of jobs and strengthening the economy.”
“California is the national leader in clean energy, and our great state is poised to become the world leader in renewable energy generation,” said Governor Jerry Brown. “I commend President Obama and Secretary Chu for making another major investment in California.”
“This clean energy project will create more than 1,000 jobs and strengthen the economy of Riverside County. Investments like this one are critical to reducing America’s dangerous dependence on foreign oil, protecting our children from pollution and creating clean energy jobs here in California,” said Senator Barbara Boxer.
And while we do not know just how much the government will have to pay out of pocket, we do know that STA had at least $50 million in debt at filing.
What we do know for sure is that at least the firm's financial advisors made money on the deal. From the company's Investors page:
World-Class Financial Advisors
In October 2009 Solar Trust engaged Citigroup Global Markets Inc. and Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc. as advisors to assist in securing more than $6 billion in financing for construction of the company’s solar power plants in California and Nevada. Citigroup and Deutsche Bank are also providing advisory services for Solar Trust’s efforts to develop models for debt and equity project financing for its solar power plant projects.
Great job there Citi and Deutsche: can you please advise us how much in taxpayer cash you received as part of your incalculable "advice" please?
Also, as noted earlier on, as part of its first day filings, the company was prompt announce the procurement of DIP funding (link), which will come in the form of a $22.3 million secured loan (against what assets?) at Libor + 800bps, courtesy of NextEra Energy Resource, LLC. The same NextEra featured in the following press release:
NextEra Energy Resources' subsidiary closes on $935 million financing and secures a DOE loan guarantee for its Genesis solar project
JUNO BEACH, Fla. – NextEra Energy Resources, LLC, announced that its subsidiary, Genesis Solar, LLC, has closed on construction and term financing consisting of $702 million in project bonds, a $150 million project term loan facility and an $83 million project letter of credit facility. The U.S. Department of Energy has provided a loan guarantee of 80 percent of the principal and interest on the project bonds and project term loan under its Financial Institution Partnership Program. Proceeds from the financing will be used primarily for the construction of the Genesis project, a 250-megawatt utility-scale concentrating solar thermal generating facility featuring proven parabolic trough solar thermal technology, located in Riverside County, Calif.
“This financing marks a significant milestone in the development of the Genesis project,” said Armando Pimentel, executive vice president and chief financial officer of NextEra Energy, Inc., the parent of NextEra Energy Resources. “We are very pleased with both the strong investor reception for this financing, which we view as a validation of our solar development efforts, and the receipt of a loan guarantee from the Department of Energy Loan Programs Office.”
That's right: one ward of the state, bailing out another ward of the state, all to reduce those evil carobn emissions. Although that is not all. NextEra is also a subsidiary of the publicly traded, albeit with very private investors, NextEra Energy (NEE). Which means that every dollar extracted out of Solar Trust via the DIP, and ultimately via a Credit Bid in which NextEra will acquire the STA assets at pennies on the dollar, will go straight to NEE's shareholders. Who are these shareholders you ask? Here they are: spot the odd one(s) out.
And that is how in crony America taxpayer money goes from one insolvent pocket, to another, to Wall Street, all under the guise of idealistic pursuits and clean energy.
There is more to this story but we will stop here as we have had enough.
For those interest here is the first day affidavit, as well as the DIP term sheet. And the last time we saw an Org Chart this fun, the company's name started with En and ended in ron.
These idiots in Washington just doesn't get it....or maybe they do. Pass out money for CHANGE and they get approval from their base. Even if it's just going to be 100% wasted on no benefit for the country...who cares, democrats don't pay taxes anyway.
"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
Abound Solar Inc., a U.S. solar manufacturer that was awarded a $400 million U.S. loan guarantee, will suspend operations and file for bankruptcy because its panels were too expensive to compete.
Abound borrowed about $70 million against the guarantee, the Loveland, Colorado-based company said today in a statement. It plans to file for bankruptcy protection in Wilmington, Delaware, next week.
The failure will follow that of Solyndra LLC, which shut down in August after receiving a $535 million loan guarantee from the same U.S. Energy Department program. Abound stopped production in February to focus on reducing costs after a global oversupply and increasing competition from China drove down the price of solar panels by half last year.
“Aggressive pricing actions from Chinese solar-panel companies have made it very difficult for an early stage startup company like Abound to scale in current market conditions,” the company said in the statement.
U.S. taxpayers may lose $40 million to $60 million on the loan after Abound’s assets are sold and the bankruptcy proceeding closes, Damien LaVera, an Energy Department spokesman, said in a statement today.
“When the floor fell out on the price of solar panels, Abound’s product was no longer cost competitive,” LaVera said.
Bankruptcy Warning
Cliff Stearns, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s oversight panel that has held several hearings and collected thousands of administration e-mails relating to Solyndra’s guarantee, said he didn’t think Abound’s closure warranted its own investigation.
“We know why they went bankrupt. We warned them they would go bankrupt,” Stearns, a Florida Republican, told reporters today. “The larger question is why the administration was pursuing a green-energy policy in which companies are going bankrupt and wasting taxpayer money.”
Stearns said his panel would probably hold a hearing on the guarantee program. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, continues to investigate the loan-guarantee program and still hasn’t received some requested documents from the Energy Department, said Jeffrey Solsby, a spokesman for Issa.
Abound was awarded the loan guarantee to build two factories to make thin-film panels using cadmium telluride. It completed one plant, in Longmont, Colorado, and never began construction on the second, which was planned for Tipton, Indiana. The company last received money from the Energy Department in August, before Solyndra’s collapse.
Economic Boost
Representative Dan Burton, an Indiana Republican, said he supported Abound because he thought the company would boost his state’s economy.
“We had a terrible economic problem. Plants were closing there in that area,” Burton told reporters in Capitol Hill today. “We thought this would be a great way to create jobs. If I had known that Abound, or Solyndra, had been in the fiscal situation it was in, I certainly would have never supported it.”
“This is not surprising at all,” Anthony Kim, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance in New York, said today in an interview. “They were trying to sell to a competitive, over- supplied market with limited production. That keeps costs high.”
$35 Billion
The Energy Department has provided almost $35 billion in loans, loan guarantees and conditional commitments to renewable- energy companies. About 35 percent of that is for solar- generating projects, which benefit from falling panel prices, compared with less than 4 percent for solar manufacturers, according to LaVera.
Besides Abound and Solyndra, two other solar manufacturers received loan guarantees. 1366 Technologies Inc. won approval to borrow as much as $150 million to produce polysilicon for solar panels and SoloPower Inc. was awarded a $197 million guarantee to make rolls of flexible solar panels using a copper-indium- gallium-selenide composite.
Neither 1366 nor SoloPower have drawn funding under the Energy Department program, LaVera said.
September 14, 2012, 5:46 pmComment House Passes Solyndra Act Aimed at Obama
By ASHLEY SOUTHALLThe House passed legislation on Friday that would phase out a Department of Energy loan guarantee program for clean and renewable energy projects.
On a 245 to 161 vote, lawmakers passed the No More Solyndras Act, named for the solar panel manufacturer that declared bankruptcy in 2011, shortly after receiving a $535 million loan guarantee from the Obama administration. Twenty-two Democrats joined Republicans in passing the measure, while four Republicans sided with Democrats in opposing it. The Senate, controlled by Democrats, is unlikely to consider the bill.
Republicans and Mitt Romney, the party’s presidential nominee, have pointed to the Obama administration’s failed investment in Solyndra as an example of a costly decision pushed by a politically driven White House. After more than a year of investigations and hearings about Solyndra and the loan guarantee program, they argued that the bill passed on Friday was necessary to protect taxpayers from risky investments.
“Solyndra is the most visible but far from the only example,” said Representative Fred Upton of Michigan, the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee and one of the authors of the bill along with Representative Cliff Stearns of Florida. “Developing new energy sources and technologies is an important part of our all-of-the-above approach, but it is clear that this loan guarantee program is ineffective at best, and counterproductive at worst.”
The bill would prohibit energy officials from considering applications for loan guarantees filed after 2011. Applications submitted before 2012 would have to be vetted by the Treasury Department before approval. The Department of Energy would also have to provide more information to Congress, and could not allow taxpayer funds to be subordinated when troubled loans are restructured.
Democrats dismissed the vote on Friday as a political move to keep Solyndra in the news. They said Republicans were ignoring the successes of the loan guarantee program.
“This is not serious legislation, it’s a political bill,” said Representative Henry "dickhead" Waxman, the ranking Democrat on the committee. “They’ve been dancing on the grave of Solyndra for so long. Enough is enough.” (RD: ok, I added the nick name)
Before Solyndra went bankrupt, President Obama used the company’s success to promote his economic agenda, though the initial loan guarantee application was vetted by the administration of former President George W. Bush.
The Energy Department’s loan guarantee to Solyndra led the Treasury to loan the company $535 million shortly before the company filed for bankruptcy last year.
“It is amazing to me that the administration gave a half-billion dollar loan guarantee to a company that its own experts predicted would fail,” Mr. Upton said. Solyndra, he said, was “so dysfunctional that it burned through this giant handout and went bankrupt in two years.”
Without denying Solyndra’s failure, Democrats rejected Republican accusations written into the bill that stated that the decision to approve Solyndra’s loan guarantee was politically driven.
Representative Diana DeGette of Colorado, the ranking Democrat on the energy panel’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, offered an amendment that would have defended officials’ handling of the loan guarantee application. It was rejected.
“The facts simply do not support the over-the-top allegations that there was anything wrong with this decision,” Ms. DeGette said.
“What the evidence showed is that the career officials and the Bush and Obama administration appointees who worked on the loan told our investigators that political considerations played no role in the decisions on Solyndra,” she said.
The bill had earlier received support from conservative policy organizations like the Heritage Foundation and Taxpayers for Common Sense, who praised the effort as a step toward federal energy subsidies. But those groups relaxed or withdrew their support for the final bill on Thursday because it would still allow about 50 projects to move forward, potentially costing taxpayers more than the Solyndra failure.
Opponents of the bill said it would take government out of innovation and unfairly preserved loan guarantees for nuclear and fossil fuel projects.
Libertatem Prius!
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Battery Maker A123 Files for Chapter 11 Protection
By PATRICK FITZGERALDElectric-car-battery manufacturer A123 Systems Inc., AONE -74.58% the recipient of nearly $250 million in government grants, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Tuesday with a plan to sell its auto-business assets to auto-parts maker Johnson Controls Inc. JCI +0.58%
The Waltham, Mass., company and two affiliates sought creditor protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., a day after it said it would be unable to make a $2.8 million interest payment to bondholders due Monday. Those bondholders, owed $143.8 million plus interest, are listed as the battery maker's largest unsecured creditor. More
A123 Systems, a maker of batteries for electric cars, filed for bankruptcy Wednesday. The company had received a federal grant of $249 million. It's a setback for the Obama administration, and fresh fodder for the Romney campaign. Via #WorldStream.
The Johnson Controls deal is valued at $125 million, and the sale is subject to higher offers at a bankruptcy auction. Johnson Controls is providing the company with $72.5 million in so-called debtor-in-possession financing to fund the bankruptcy case.
A123's auto business fits with Johnson Controls' "long-term growth strategies and overall commitment to the development of the advanced battery industry," Johnson Controls Power Solutions President Alex Molinaroli said in a statement.
Johnson Controls, based in Milwaukee, is one of the largest auto-parts makers in the world and is the single largest maker of standard automotive batteries. It has been expanding its operations in advanced lithium-ion batteries and has built a plant in Holland, Mich. It counts Daimler AG DAI.XE +0.45% and BMW AG BMW.XE +0.88% as customers.
Investment bank Lazard Freres & Co. has been shopping A123 for months, but according to court filings only the U.S. unit of Chinese auto-parts maker Wanxiang Group Corp. made an offer that would keep the company in business.
In August, A123 Systems entered into a $75 million loan deal with the U.S. unit of Wanxiang Group as part of a proposed $465 million investment deal. But because certain closing conditions, including A123's liquidity falling below operational levels, didn't occur, only the $75 million loan was funded.
"We determined not to move forward with the previously announced Wanxiang agreement as a result of unanticipated and significant challenges to its completion," said A123 Chief Executive David Vieau in a statement.
Pin Ni, Wanxiang America's president, couldn't be reached to comment.
In a bid to jumpstart the electric-car-battery industry, the U.S. government has provided more than $1.2 billion to battery makers in the past three years. But the industry has been slow to take off. Another battery maker, Ener1 Inc., which also received a government grant, filed for Chapter 11 protection earlier this year.
The Department of Energy awarded A123 $249 million in grants, about half of which the company has used to pay for some of the costs of building a factory in Livonia, Mich.
A123 has suffered losses since its inception in 2001. Its market capitalization has dropped to around $162 million from $1.6 billion at the end of 2009, a few months after its public listing of shares.
The company's balance sheet took a hit last year from charges related to its investment in electric-car maker Fisker Automotive Inc. and capacity reduction in South Korea. Adding to its troubles, the company in late March said it expected to spend at least $55 million in coming quarters on a recall of defective batteries.
Latham & Watkins is representing A123 in its bankruptcy case. The company listed assets of $459.8 million and debts of $376 million in its Chapter 11 petition.
—Mara Lemos-Stein, Marie Beaudette and Michael Ramsey contributed to this article. Write to Patrick Fitzgerald at patrick.fitzgerald@dowjones.com
Libertatem Prius!
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January 29, 2013 at 12:35 pm
U.S. approves sale of A123 to Chinese firm
By David Shepardson
Detroit News Washington Bureau
Comments
Washington — The Obama administration approved the sale of most of bankrupt battery maker A123 Systems' assets to Chinese firm Wanxiang Group Corp.
The company's U.S. subsidiary, Chicago-based Wanxiang America, said it has received approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to complete its acquisition of substantially all of the non-government business assets of A123 Systems, Inc.
"We're pleased the government has completed its review and provided us with the go-ahead to finalize this transaction," said Pin Ni, president of Wanxiang America. "The future is bright for A123. It is a company with exceptional talent and potential, and Wanxiang America is committed to its long-term success and the continuance of its U.S. operations. Wanxiang America looks forward to closing the transaction and to continuing to foster the technologies A123 has worked so hard to develop."
In December, Wanxiang won a bankruptcy court auction to acquire most of A123 for $256.6 million, including its grid and commercial business assets and its U.S. facilities in Michigan, Massachusetts and Missouri.
A123 had vowed to create 3,000 jobs by the end of 2012, but only has 1,300. It won $249.1 million in grants from the Obama administration in 2009 to build battery plants in Romulus and Livonia, but has only spent $132 million. It also received more than $125 million in tax credits and funding from the state of Michigan.
Navitas Systems, a Woodridge, Ill.-based company, has agreed to buy A123's Ann Arbor-based government business, including all U.S. military contracts for $2.25 million.
President Barack Obama hailed A123 and even invited the company's CEO to the Rose Garden in April 2010.
"This is what happens when we place our bets on American workers and American businesses. And we're going to continue working to help them manufacture more success stories like these across all sectors of our economy," Obama said.
A123 filed for bankruptcy in October and initially sought approval to sell the bulk of itself to Johnson Controls Inc. in less than six weeks.
A123 has 625 employees at plants in Romulus and Livonia and an Ann Arbor office, along with 348 temporary workers in the state.
The Waltham, Mass., startup — which has lost $900 million since 2007 — received $50 million in debtor in possession financing from Wanxiang.
In November, Michigan's two senators and 11 House members raised concerns that the acquisition of bankrupt battery maker A123 by a Chinese company may pose a "threat to U.S. national security."
In a letter to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner — who chairs the Committee on Foreign Investment, which reviews the sale of U.S. companies — Sens. Carl Levin, D-Detroit, Debbie Stabenow, D-Lansing, and members of the House raised concerns.
Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Zeeland, said Tuesday the decision hasn't "changed my opinion that the core technology developed by A123 and the intellectual property that goes along with it can be separated along A123's business lines. It is also apparent that this technology was developed using taxpayer dollars through President Obama's stimulus program and is now falling into the hands of a foreign company. American taxpayers should not be funding technology that will in turn be used in competition against American companies."
Huizenga said he is "currently looking into legislative solutions to prevent both taxpayer-funded and sensitive technologies from being sold to foreign companies in the future."
The company is the latest in a string of advanced battery firms that have gone bankrupt despite millions of dollars in subsidies from state governments and the Bush and Obama administrations.
In January, New York-based Ener1 filed for bankruptcy protection. A similar filing was made in March by Canada-based Azure Dynamics, which has offices in Oak Park and installs the battery electric powertrain in Ford's Transit Connect.
The Obama administration awarded $2.4 billion in stimulus grants in August 2009 for advanced batteries and electric vehicles, saying the awards would create thousands of jobs.
The president set a goal of 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015, but sales have totaled fewer than 40,000 since 2011. Many battery suppliers have created a small fraction of the promised jobs.
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/05/2015 21:00 -0400
What could possibly go wrong?
Clearly having not learned their lesson from 'interfering' in free markets (and all the deflation-creating over-supplying, crony-capitalizing, taxpayer money-wasting malinvestment that goes with it), NBC News reports, The White House has announced a goal to train 75,000 workers in the solar industry by 2020, many of them veterans. In a sentence only President Obama could utter, he explains "these are good-paying jobs that are helping folks enter the middle-class." Climate 'fixed', folks 'fixed', veterans 'fixed' middle-class-economics 'fixed'... and we are sure it will be unequivocally good for America (until trade wars pick up once again).
As NBC News reports,
The White House has announced a goal to train 75,000 workers in the solar industry by 2020, many of them veterans.
"These are good-paying jobs that are helping folks enter the middle-class," President Barack Obama said on Friday at Hill Air Force Base in Utah. The plan will expand on the Department of Energy SunShot Initiative's Solar Instructor Training Network currently running at more than 400 community colleges.
The White House also announced the Solar Ready Vets program aimed at helping veterans transition into the solar industry. A joint program between the Department of Defense and the DOE, it's currently being launched at 10 military bases across the country, including Hill Air Force Base and Camp Pendleton in California.
Obama touted the new goal as a way to bolster the economy and help meet the White House's climate change goals, which call for greenhouse gas emissions to be cut 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. The solar industry is creating jobs at a rate of 10 times faster than the overall economy, the White House said. Obama announced the new program the same day the March jobs report was released showing the most sluggish U.S. employment growth since December 2013.
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Nikita Khrushchev:"We will bury you"
"Your grandchildren will live under communism."
“You Americans are so gullible.
No, you won’t accept To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism.
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. ."
We’ll so weaken your To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. like overripe fruit into our hands."
The bankruptcy of solar-panel maker Solyndra neatly encapsulates the economic, political and intellectual bankruptcy of Barack Obama’s Big Idea. It was the president’s intention back in 2009 to begin centrally reorganizing the U.S. economy around the supposed climate-change crisis.
To what end?
Well, Obama claimed his election would mark “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” But that was just the cover story.
At its core, Obamanomics is about the top-down redistribution of wealth and income.
Government spending on various “green” subsidies and programs, along with a cap-and-trade system to limit carbon emissions, would enrich key Democrat constituencies: lawyers, public sector unions, academia and non-profits.
Oh, and Wall Street, too. Who was the exclusive financial adviser to Solyndra when it was trying to secure the $535 million loan from Washington? Goldman Sachs. And had the cap-and-trade scheme been enacted, big banks stood ready to reap billions from the trading of carbon emission credits.
No wonder many Democratic strategists predicted their party’s 2008 landslide win would usher in a generation of political dominance.
Obamanomics, essentially, would divert taxpayer dollars to the Green Lobby – and then into the campaign coffers of the Democratic Party.
This is what crony capitalism is really all about: politicians enriching favored businesses, who then return the favor. Or maybe it’s the other way around, Who cares, really. It’s an endless, profitable loop for both.
And Obama almost pulled it off. The Great Recession conveniently allowed the president to start the spendathon under the guise of economic stimulus. (“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” – White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, 2009). As it turns out, the $38.6 billion loan program for clean energy firms that Solyndra benefited from has created just 3,545 permanent new jobs after parceling out half its dough. That works out to around $5 million a job.
Unfortunately for the Obamacrats, the financial meltdown also undercut political support for cap-and-trade on Capitol Hill. Voters worried the scheme would slow growth and cost jobs. But without permanently and continually raising the price of carbon-based fuels, many green businesses can’t make the numbers work.
As Peter Lynch, a New York-based solar energy analyst, told ABC News:
It’s very difficult to perceive a company with a model that says, well, I can build something for six dollars and sell it for three dollars. Those numbers don’t generally work. You don’t want to lose three dollars for every unit you make.
Unless, of course, American taxpayers make up the difference — though in the case of Solyndra, even government’s thumb on the scale wasn’t enough to save it. And it often isn’t enough when an investment’s goals are a fat political reward rather than a financial one. Indeed, studies of similar government investment efforts around the world show they’re usually a bad deal for taxpayers. An analysis of Canada’s government-backed venture capital fund, for instance, found the recipient firms “underperform on a variety of criteria, including value-creation, as measured by the likelihood and size of IPOs and M&As, and innovation, as measured by patents.”
Even after getting the loan, Solyndra spent $187,000 on lobbying efforts, according to Bloomberg, including trying to get the White House to push government agencies to install its panels on the rooftops of federal buildings and extend “buy American” rules that favor U.S. companies. Instead of revenue seeking, Solyndra was “rent seeking,” which means trying to make money by manipulating government .
And when the White House was trying to determine whether to sink another $67 million into Solyndra, its calculus was political not financial (via The Washington Post):
“The optics of a Solyndra default will be bad,” the Office of Management and Budget staff member wrote Jan. 31 in an e-mail to a co-worker. “If Solyndra defaults down the road, the optics will be arguably worse later than they would be today. . . . In addition, the timing will likely coincide with the 2012 campaign season heating up.”
That’s not how the private sector makes investment decision. But it’s routine for government where the stakeholders are politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists and favored constituencies. The takers, not the makers. That’s whose side Obamanomics is on.
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Nikita Khrushchev:"We will bury you"
"Your grandchildren will live under communism."
“You Americans are so gullible.
No, you won’t accept To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism.
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We’ll so weaken your To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. like overripe fruit into our hands."
Opinion | In order to understand the future we certainly must understand the past. This is true at least when it comes to what we can expect from corrupt politicians.
To envision the size of the pot of gold that Democrats envision for themselves at the other end of the Green New Deal rainbow we only have to look back to the Obama administration, the $3 Trillion in “stimulus” money, the Green Movement, and how it seemingly enriched Democrats, their donors, and Nancy Pelosi in particular.
For background we cite a September 2011 article from the Daily Mail:
Even as government financed “green energy” pioneer Solyndra was failing, the Obama administration approved an additional $1 Billion in loans to similar green energy projects.
A whopping 737 million of that money went to the Crescent Dunes project situated in Tonopah, Nevada, to finance a 110-megawatt desert solar power plant.
Stay with me.
Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law’ company was a primary beneficiary of that money landing a $737 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy for Crescent Dunes.
Funny that as Democrats scream that Saudi’s renting out an entire floor of a Trump hotel is an untenable emolument. But I digress.
Despite knowledge that Solyndra was tanking then-Minority Leader Pelosi’s brother-in-law, second in command at the energy investment firm backing the project, somehow secured government funding for the SolarReserve project.
PCG Clean Energy & Technology Fund (East) LLC, listed as one of the investors in the project was given the staggering loan, which even dwarfs that given to failed company Solyndra.
The project was expected to generate enough electricity to power 43,000 homes. That’s it.
Obama’s Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced the loan just two days after the doomed $535 million Solyndra disaster was scheduled for completion.
At the time, Florida Rep. Cliff Stearns, then-chairman of the investigations subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce warned:
“The administration’s flagship project Solyndra is bankrupt and being investigated by the FBI, the promised jobs never materialized, and now the Department of Energy is preparing to rush out nearly $5 billion in loans in the final 48 hours before stimulus funds expire — that’s nearly $105 million every hour that must be finalized until the deadline.”
Despite the warnings, Energy Secretary Chu, said the projects would create 900 construction jobs and, get ready for this, trumpets please… 52 permanent jobs. Whoopie!
More disturbing is that other investors, besides Pelosi’s brother-in-law Ronald Pelosi, included Steve Mitchell, who served on the board of directors of Solyndra while the company was collapsing.
All told, Obama era expenditures, first put in place by Speaker Pelosi, who did away with the usual budgetary process, exceeded revenues by more than $1 Trillion each year.
This became the baseline for unquestioned omnibus spending packages that subsequent Republican Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan refused to reign in. Welcome to the UniParty ripoff of America’s taxpayers.
This allowed politicians on both sides of the aisle to grow rich, while our children were saddled with a debt burden from which they are not likely to escape.
There’s a reason Nancy Pelosi has a net worth ranging from $120-185 million. She more than likely earned her money the old fashioned … way by stealing it from taxpayers.
It’s the same reason Democrats are lining up behind the Green New Deal that reads like a Republican parody of a Democrat program.
Now put the “Green New Deal” in perspective. If the beltway elites grew rich by spending $4 trillion dollars each year, imagine how much can they believe they can skim from doubling or tripling those expenditures.
Asking for a friend.
Now you know why these beltway rats want to impeach President Trump.
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Nikita Khrushchev:"We will bury you"
"Your grandchildren will live under communism."
“You Americans are so gullible.
No, you won’t accept To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism.
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We’ll so weaken your To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. like overripe fruit into our hands."
Re: Solyndra - Obama Administration Scandal
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