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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TopCat who wrote (629295)	9/24/2011 9:47:28 AM
From: SilentZ	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1577940

>So you think the only reason the company is being investigated is political....that if it weren't for the Republicans, this half billion dollar disappearing act would be no big deal...just business as usual in a Democrat's world. Is that about right? We know why they failed. They pursued a technology that used materials that seemed cost-competitive at the time but turned out not to be. That happens in a free market, right? >It's my understanding and EXPERIENCE that it is very unusual for government loans to take a secondary position. It has already been stated that somewhere along the way a loan modification was made on this loan CHANGING the government's (taxpayer's) position from primary to secondary. It doesn't seem that different than our experience with bank bailouts. A lot of people were kept whole that probably shouldn't have been, and a lot of people that weren't should have. >If you don't find just these two things (and there is more) to be a bit fishy and worthy of investigation, then I would suggest you have no business advising any organization involving funds or funding. Whatever (rolls eyes). -Z

To: TopCat who wrote (629295)	9/24/2011 10:15:51 AM
From: i-node	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1577940

>> If you don't find just these two things (and there is more) to be a bit fishy and worthy of investigation, then I would suggest you have no business advising any organization involving funds or funding. Z is pretty much ted. That is liberal does it -- good -- conservative does it -- bad. This Solyndra deal stinks like hell. The scandal is just going to get worse. This is fraud and corruption.

To: TopCat who wrote (629295)	9/24/2011 10:29:38 AM
From: SilentZ	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 1577940

The Phony Solyndra Scandal By JOE NOCERA Published: September 23, 2011 If Brian Harrison and W. G. Stover, the two Solyndra executives who took the Fifth Amendment at a Congressional hearing on Friday, ever spend a day in jail, I’ll stand on my head in Times Square. It’s not going to happen, for one simple reason: neither they, nor anyone else connected with Solyndra, have done anything remotely criminal. The company’s recent bankruptcy — which the Republicans are now rabidly “investigating” because Solyndra had the misfortune to receive a $535 million federally guaranteed loan from the Obama administration — was largely brought on by a stunning collapse in the price of solar panels over the past year or so. The company’s innovative solar panels, high-priced to begin with, became increasingly uncompetitive in the marketplace. Solyndra didn’t have enough big commercial customers to create the necessary economies of scale. And although Harrison and Stover remained optimistic up to the bitter end — insisting six weeks before the late-August bankruptcy filing that the company was going to be fine — they ultimately failed to raise additional capital that would have allowed Solyndra to stay in business. The Republicans are trying to make that optimism appear sinister, but if we’ve learned anything from the financial crisis, it is that wishful thinking in the face of a collapsing market is not a crime. Otherwise, Richard Fuld, the former chief executive of Lehman Brothers, would be wearing prison garb. Harrison and Stover are on the hot seat. Anything they say in their defense — even an off-hand remark — can and will be used against them. Their lawyers would be fools if they didn’t insist that their clients take the Fifth Amendment. Do the Republicans know this? Of course. Do they care? Of course not. For an hour and a half on Friday morning, they peppered the two men with questions about this “taxpayer ripoff,” as Representative Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican, described it, knowing full well that Harrison and Stover would invoke their constitutional right to remain silent. Joe McCarthy would have been proud. The purpose of the hearing — indeed, the point of manufacturing a Solyndra investigation in the first place — is to embarrass the president. That’s how Washington works in the modern age: the party out of power gins up phony scandals aimed at hurting the party in power. Undoubtedly, the Solyndra “scandal” will draw a little blood: there are some embarrassing e-mails showing the White House pushing to get the deal done quickly so it could tout Solyndra’s green jobs as part of the stimulus package. But if we could just stop playing gotcha for a second, we might realize that federal loan programs — especially loans for innovative energy technologies — virtually require the government to take risks the private sector won’t take. Indeed, risk-taking is what these programs are all about. Sometimes, the risks pay off. Other times, they don’t. It’s not a taxpayer ripoff if you don’t bat 1.000; on the contrary, a zero failure rate likely means that the program is too risk-averse. Thus, the real question the Solyndra case poses is this: Are the potential successes significant enough to negate the inevitable failures? I have a hard time answering “no.” Most electricity today is generated by coal-fired power plants, operated by monopoly, state-regulated utilities. Because they’ve been around so long, and because coal is cheap, these plants have built-in cost advantages that no new technology can overcome without help. The federal guarantees help lower the cost of capital for technologies like solar; they help spur innovation; and they help encourage private investment. These are all worthy goals. To say “no” is also to cede the solar panel industry to China, which last year alone provided some $30 billon in subsidies for its solar industry. Over all, the American solar industry is a big success story; it now employs more people than either steel or coal, and it’s a net exporter. But solar panel manufacturing — a potential source of middle-class jobs, and an important reason the White House was so high on Solyndra, which made its panels in Fremont, Calif. — is another story. Not so long ago, China made 6 percent of the world’s solar panels. Now it makes 54 percent, and leads the world in solar panel manufacturing. Needless to say, the U.S. share of the market has shrunk. The only way America can manufacture competitive solar panels is to come up with innovative technologies that the Chinese can’t replicate. Like, for instance, Solyndra’s. At the hearing on Friday, several of the Republican congressmen boasted that, in passing the continuing resolution to keep the government running the day before, they had succeeded in slashing the program that had made the loan to Solyndra. It’s true: of the $4 billion that remained in the program, $1.5 billion was cut. But the real winner isn’t the American taxpayer or even the House Republicans. It’s the Chinese solar industry.

To: TopCat who wrote (629295)	9/24/2011 10:59:12 AM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 1577940

this half billion dollar disappearing act would be no big deal...just business as usual in a Democrat's world ..... If you don't find just these two things (and there is more) to be a bit fishy and worthy of investigation, then I would suggest you have no business advising any organization involving funds or funding. Charities are big business. It's an industry itself. Many often spend most of their money on overhead (executive compensation, program development, etc) and fund-raising (sometimes disguised as public education). People who give often don't know how much of their donation is going to pay people like you know who. Charities have to fill out an IRS form listing what they spend their money on but there's no consistency on how they account for things ... fundraising costs, consultants costs, compensation of staff can all be called public education or program development in order to inflate the percent reported as program (the reason for the charity) expenditures.