Posted on 10/01/2011 3:43:39 AM PDT by Kaslin
Solyndra, the California energy company gone bust, was so cash strapped in December, 2010 that they defaulted on a loan payment to the government. That didn't bother the Obama Administration, though. In fact, DOE officials amended the loan agreement, allowing Solyndra to draw another $67 million, and subordinated the taxpayer's credit position to that of private investors.
There was an abundance of information and reasons why the Solyndra loan should never have been approved in 2009. But, the Obama White House rejected all the obvious warning signs preferring to pass out half a trillion dollars like party favors and to create campaign photo-ops.
The White House says this wasn't stupid. "That's just the way business works," according to the President's spokesman, Jay Carney.
The next time Obama shows he understands how ANYTHING in business works, it will be the first time.
The White House still defends the $535 billion loan guarantee to Solyndra as an investment in "cutting edge technology." A less varnished assessment would conclude that it was a government investment in opulence designed to failed from the beginning.
The glitzy made-for-Hollywood 300,000 square foot plant, characterized by workers as the "Taj Mahal," had vastly greater manufacturing capacity than Solyndra ever commanded in market share and came with "robots that whistled Disney tunes, spa-like showers with liquid-crystal displays of the water temperature, and glass-walled conference rooms."
The Administration doubled down on stupid by not recognizing that failure was imminent by the end of 2010. In addition, the Energy Act of 2005 specifically prohibits subordination of the taxpayer's credit position – an apparently violation of federal law.
The DOE says it renegotiated the loan agreement and allowed Solyndra to draw down the additional $67 million because the government officials "thought it gave Solyndra a fighting chance to survive and the taxpayers their best chance to recover their loan."
What the DOE doesn't say is that the subordination of the taxpayer's position and the additional $67 million created an illusion of better financial condition than was reality. In other words, the DOE helped put a better-than-actual appearance on Solyndra, who then went to the private markets to raise additional investment capital. That prompted allegations that government officials may be guilty of fraud according to Andrew McCarthy, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney.
The Solyndra scandal has already prompted five high level investigations. What Obama thought would be government funded campaign props is likely to turn into a re-election season nightmare.
Impeachable offenses???
Perp walks for DOE officials? White House officials?
I’m pretty sure it was a $535 MILLION, not billion.
Who is the Guy who wrote this article? It was 535 million not Billion.
Ah, nothing like the joy of writing a nice article and then trashing it by making a ludicrous mistake.
The writer’s like Obama. Neither of them can tell the difference between a billion and a trillion....
Why should they care, it isn’t there money being wasted.
there=their
its not half a trillion, its half a billion. the article made a mistake
Because all these “loans” to “green” energy gambits all go to leftists and Dem supporters. That’s why this will continue. Obama is raiding the treasury for his ideological buddies.
The author was catching it on that billions to trillions mistake in the comments section.
"As I think of this bill, and the fact that the more progress we make the deeper we go into the hole, I am reminded of a group of men who were working on a street. They had dug quite a number of holes. When they got through, they failed to puddle or tamp the earth when it was returned to the hole, and they had a nice little mound, which was quite a traffic hazard.
"Not knowing what to do with it, they sat down on the curb and had a conference. After a while, one of the fellows snapped his fingers and said, ‘I have it. I know how we will get rid of that overriding earth and remove the hazard. We will just dig the hole deeper.'" [Congressional Record, June 16, 1965, p. 13884].
This is just a sophisticated way to loot the treasury using existing vehicles. They are speeding it up to get the cash out to the money laundering entities so to have a bunch of money for the election.
And still no one does anything to stop him.
Bush would not approve the loan. Obama bragged that the loan languished in the previous administration and he, Obama, got this great, green, Earth saving, job creating, loan moving.
So it must be Bush’s fault.
(They still haven’t figured out why there is no profit when you sell something for three dollars that cost six dollars to make.)
Were solely commercial monies involved in this it would come off as monumentally stupid on a scale that surpasses the Madoff scandal.
However, the use of taxpayer funded monies makes it criminal, nearly to the point of treasonous.
As long as the government successfully hides the fact that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GOVERNMENT MONEY, IT’S ALL TAXPAYER MONEY, these kinds of shenanigans will continue. This is another example of the success of the progressives in controlling the lexicon and the terms of the political discourse.
Obama is not stupid.
He is malignant and malicious.
I want to know who got the contract to build this “opulent” building. I hear it was no bid, a union boondoggle for sure, but what were they paid to build it and how much did that construction company, union workers give in campaign donations to BO?
And how many of these "Solyndra's" are out there?
This has been the plan all along
There is but one
Solution and death is not allowed
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