Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : The Solyndra Scandal -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wayners who wrote (307)	11/25/2011 12:39:20 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1400

The Solyndra Mess A Republican inquiry into the failure of the solar company yields questions about due diligence but no serious answers on energy. Even so, the hearings have raised legitimate questions about the Solyndra deal. Solyndra was the first beneficiary of the loan program and seemed to be an ideal candidate — a company with a new technology and lots of venture capital — for an administration eager to show results. So eager, in fact, that the White House appeared willing to ignore warnings from its own experts about rising competition in the solar panel market. E-mail exchanges released by Republicans from August 2009, as the loan neared approval, show that some officials in the Office of Management and Budget were beginning to worry that Chinese companies could threaten Solyndra’s sales with cheaper units; one official asked that “the announcement be postponed.” But those worries were dismissed, and the loan announcement went ahead as planned. Those fears were not unfounded. By May 2010, when President Obama visited the company to trumpet green energy, the market had weakened and Solyndra was showing cracks. Yet the White House remained deeply invested in Solyndra’s success; according to one e-mail from an investor quoted by the Republicans, it asked the company to delay announcing layoffs until after the November 2010 elections. Given Solyndra’s prominence, layoffs would obviously have been embarrassing. One other issue involves Mr. Chu’s decision to subordinate Solyndra’s loan to a new round of private financing last February, allowing private investors to move ahead of taxpayers in the event of a default. Republicans say this was illegal, but Mr. Chu says he had been assured by the loan program’s chief counsel that it was proper because new financing was essential to keep the company solvent.

To: Wayners who wrote (307)	12/5/2011 9:10:18 PM
From: joseffy	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1400

Claim: Clinton Collected $50K Per Month From MF Global [Crony operation on display] ............................................................................................................ Former president's new firm Teneo Strategy was hired to boost Corzine. by Neil W. McCabe 12/05/2011 humanevents.com William J. Clinton (left) and Jon S. Corzine A former MF Global employee accused former president William J. Clinton of collecting $50,000 per month through his Teneo advisory firm in the months before the brokerage careened towards its Halloween filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Teneo was hired by MF Global’s former CEO Jon S. Corzine to improve his image and to enhance his connections with Clinton’s political family, said the employee, who asked that his name be withheld because he feared retribution. “They were supposed to be helping Corzine improve his image as a CEO—I guess you can tell how that went,” he said. Corzine resigned as CEO and chairman November 4. Before Corzine joined MF Global in May 2010, the firm was a smart and well-run commodities broker, a culture that was turned upside-down by his leadership style, he said. “The traders would be shaking their heads,” he said. “They would come back to their desk and say, ‘Well, I thought we were going to do this—but Corzine would come by and do something else all by himself,’” he said. The Teneo contract with MF Global lasted at least five months, he said. “The board cancelled it after Corzine resigned.” The source, who is no longer associated with MF Global, said Teneo is a dual-track company with one side devoted to merchant and investment banking and the other side set up to provide image and strategy consulting services. Clinton is the chairman of the company’s advisory board. His duties and compensation have not been released. The other member of the board is former British prime minister Tony Blair. Two of the three founding partners are very close to the former president and his wife, Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton. They are Douglas J. Band, who is the former president’s counselor and has served on his personal staff since 1995 and Declan Kelly, who earned the “Hillraiser” status in the secretary’s 2008 run for president for bundling more than $100,000 for the campaign. Another prominent member of the Clinton political family is Tom Shea. Shea is a senior vice president for Teneo Strategy and served as Corzine’s chief of staff, when Corzine was the governor of New Jersey. Kelly sold his public relations firm Financial Dynamics in 2006 to FTI for $340 million, and stayed with that company until July 2009, when he joined the State Department as the Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland. The source said, “Kelly was given a job they created out our whole cloth.” The job did not exist previously. “He basically got to ride around developing a book of business, while he waited for his non-compete clause to run out,” he said. Kelley and the former president traveled together networking and making introductions at international conferences and events, he said. The Secretary of State also traveled with Kelly, including the October 2010 U.S. – Northern Ireland Economics Conference, which Kelly organized and at which the secretary was the featured speaker. The secretary announced that she accepted Kelly’s resignation May 11. Teneo landed its first major client June 1, when the Rockefeller Foundation gave Teneo a $3,447,150, six-month contract to help plan the foundation’s 2013 centennial. The foundation is another member of the Clinton’s extended family. It gave Clinton its Lifetime Innovation Achievement Award July 27 and the foundation is listed as a between $1 to $5 million contributor to the William J. Clinton Foundation, along with several members of the Rockefeller family who are listed as individual contributors. [In the preparation of this story, several emails and phone calls were placed to Teneo, MF Global and the State Department for comment. In each case, there was no response.]

To: Wayners who wrote (307)	1/17/2012 6:55:17 PM
From: joseffy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1400

Solar-panel company lays off 40 employees BY KRIS TURNER BLADE BUSINESS WRITER : 1/17/2012 toledoblade.com Willard & Kelsey Solar Group LLC laid off about 40 people indefinitely at the beginning of January until changes to its production line are completed, a company official said Monday. Michael Cicak, the company's chief executive officer and chairman of the board, would not say when the changes would be completed or when the laid-off employees could return to work. "We have some technical people in here improving the efficiency of the assembly line," Mr. Cicak said, adding that the Perrysburg-based facility still has about 30 employees. He said Willard & Kelsey has a little more than 80 employees when it's fully functional. The start-up company has been plagued by a series of production and staffing delays since it was formed in 2008. It has received millions of dollars in government loans and tax breaks and has been toured by high-profile officials such as Vice President Joe Biden, U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, and former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland. Mr. Cicak said last week that the facility was to reopen Monday after a period of adjusting its inventory. A voice mail message on the company's main phone line said the same thing. Only 15 cars were in the parking lot at 1:30 p.m. Monday. The office was devoid of activity, and the rows of desks were empty. A tour of the production line and the changes being made to it were not made available to The Blade. Mr. Cicak said the assembly line changes will improve the output of the cadmium telluride thin-film solar panels produced at Willard & Kelsey. The value of those panels, which usually are less expensive than other models, will increase if they can produce more energy, he added. Ideally, the solar panels will increase from a 10 percent output to about 15 percent, Mr. Cicak said. "We will be the lowest-cost producer of solar panels in the world," he said. The cost of changing the assembly line was not released. Willard & Kelsey also does not release its quarterly earnings or its profit margin because it's a privately held company, Mr. Cicak said. As of early 2011, the company had received a $5 million research and development loan from the Ohio Department of Development, a $10 million loan from the Ohio Air Quality Development Authority, a $3.3 million job creation tax credit, and a $701,000 grant to provide training for 50 current and 250 new workers. Attempts to reach state officials were unsuccessful because Monday was Martin Luther King, Jr., Day. Mr. Cicak previously has made sweeping claims for how many people the 262,000-square-foot plant along State Rt. 25 could employ. In February, 2011, the company said it planned to have 250 employees by the end of 2011. At the same time, Mr. Cicak said the company could produce 600 to 700 jobs in the next to two years and up to 4,000 in five or six years. On Monday, he said the company was in the research stage of developing a powerful solar panel that would put it ahead of its competitors. "We're going to be way ahead of the world," he said.