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Showing posts with label Solyndra. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Solyndra. Show all posts

Abound Solar declares bankruptcy


Just this week Abound Solar announced it was declaring bankruptcy.
Abound Solar, a solar panel maker that received a $400 million loan guarantee from the federal government, announced on Thursday that it would file for bankruptcy amid plummeting prices and intense competition from Chinese manufacturers in the solar equipment market.
The failure of Abound, which tapped about $68 million of the loan guarantee before the Energy Department cut off its credit last September, comes after the collapse last year of Solyndra, another high-tech solar panel maker that had received federal funds. . . .
Abound Solar, of Loveland, Colo., with manufacturing in Tipton, Ind., had been struggling for months. In February, it announced it was closing its factory to conserve resources while it tried to start production of a more advanced product. The company produced panels that made electricity directly from sunlight using a chemistry called cadmium telluride, which was intended to have a cost advantage over the more common silicon cells. But that cost advantage eroded as silicon cells plunged in price.
Abound said it would file for bankruptcy next week and dismiss its 125 employees. . . .

Rep. Paul Ryan versus Goolsbee



For an academic, Goolsbee has a bad habit of either just following Democratic talking points or just making things up.  Points that I know he is sufficiently smart enough not to believe.  In the transcript below he has no problem attacking Romney for a company going under after Romney had left Bain,  and fails to acknowledge the inaccuracy of his attacks.  Ryan's comment was about the large portion of government money going to Obama supporters, not that all of it did.  Goolsbee's reference to a single McCain supporter is completely irrelevant.  The hope that "the Obama philosophy [is] to try to transform the government into only picking winners" is something that I can't believe Goolsbee believes.  How does it address the question of what is actually happening?  Why does Goolsbee believe that the government will have a higher success rate than private individuals investing their own money?  Even Wallace finds it necessary to bring Goolsbee back on track.  The transcript from Fox News Sunday is available here:

WALLACE: But let me just ask you, sir, do you see anything wrong with what Bain Capital did, and what lots of money, millions of dollars into this steel industry, the time when the steel was in trouble, what's wrong with that? 
GOOLSBEE: Well, it depends on how they did it. And as I say, they ought to turn over the annual records of the company.If you want to establish they did not have kind of a leverage buy out mentality of pulling the resources out of the company -- turn over the records and let the people see what the business record was. Don't just pick two or three companies that are the success stories and say look at these because that invites the ones that went wrong.In this case, the company did horribly but the investors did great. So, I think it's a little bit different than a normal investor philosophy which if we can turn the company around in a positive way, we benefit. This was the case where they canceled the pension, they drove the company into the ground but the investors from Bain actually profited a great deal. 
WALLACE: Let me follow up with Congressman Paul Ryan.Because the Obama campaign says the point of Romney economics is to make money for Bain, to make money for their investors, even if all of the workers get wiped out. And in this particular case, with the steel mill in Kansas City, the workers and that plant went bankrupt. The 750 workers were laid off and Bain did make millions of dollars in profits. 
RYAN: You know what's ironic about this, Chris, Mitt Romney was running the Olympics during this time. He wasn't even running Bain during the time period in question.I think the individual if I'm not mistaken who was running Bain is a big Obama contributor.But for the point, Chris, what Bain did was they used private capital to help struggling businesses. What President Obama is doing is he's gambling with taxpayer money and giving money to corporate contributors, to campaign contributors like Solyndra and he's losing taxpayer money.So, what we have in the Obama administration is this crony capitalism, this corporate welfare where President Obama thinks it's right that we taxpayer dollars to give to private companies and take bets on these private companies. That's wrong.What is right is a private sector that you have risked that capital. You put capital in businesses whether they're struggling or not to try and grow those businesses, some succeed, some don't. On the net, when on Mitt Romney ran Bain, they were very successful. They created thousands of jobs, great success stories.But for the point, we don't think that the government should be in the position of picking winners or losers in the economy which is the result of the president's economics.  
WALLACE: Let me -- 
RYAN: The result of it is, we have stagnation. 
WALLACE: Let me let Mr. Goolsbee into that.I mean, what about the argument that, you know, it's the private sector. If companies want to take a chance, they take a chance. But the government shouldn't be picking winners and losers. 
GOOLSBEE: Well, that's two different arguments. The first one I actually think is a little bit cheeky because in several of these bankruptcy cases, you saw the investors profit by dumping the pension on to the government and actually getting bailouts from the government, which helped to cover the profits that were going to the investors.On the picking of winners, it is absolutely not the Obama philosophy to try to transform the government into only picking winners. By that I think Congressman Ryan is referring to things like in the midst of the crisis deciding to save General Motors and the auto industry. 
WALLACE: I think wait a minute. Without speaking for him, I think he's talking about things like Solyndra. . . .
"Watchdog finds Solyndra loan was 'rushed'"

"Watchdog finds Solyndra loan was 'rushed'"

From Fox News:
An internal investigation into a half-billion dollar federal loan to failed solar company Solyndra Inc. has found that a last-minute review by financial experts was rushed and completed in about a day. Those experts had concerns, but there's no evidence to show whether they were addressed by the Energy Department, which already had decided to approve the loan. The report, released Wednesday by the Treasury Department's inspector general, provides further evidence of serious concerns about a loan to California-based Solyndra pushed by the Obama administration. . . .
Another Solyndra? This time with up to $2.1 billion at stake

Another Solyndra? This time with up to $2.1 billion at stake

From the Washington Examiner:
Solar Trust for America received $2.1 billion in conditional loan guarantees from the Department of Energy -- "the largest amount ever offered to a solar project," according to Energy Secretary Steven Chu -- for a project near Blythe, Calif., but declared bankruptcy within a year. It is unclear how much of the guarantee, if any, was actually awarded. Senior officials in Obama's administration had very high hopes for the Blythe project. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar attended the groundbreaking ceremony, which he described as "a historic moment in America’s new energy frontier" and "another important step in making America’s clean energy future a reality." Chu trumpeted at the time that Solar Trust would prove that "when we rev up the great American innovation machine, we can out-compete any other nation." . . .
At the same time Fisker Automotive is having trouble.
Fisker Automotive's new chief executive, Tom LaSorda, said the luxury electric-vehicle company is looking at alternatives to building its second model in a former General Motors Co. GM -4.56% plant in Delaware, raising the possibility of abandoning a plan that had financial backing from the Obama administration. Mr. LaSorda also said Fisker is looking for strategic partners as part of its effort to raise new funds to replace a federal loan that was frozen earlier this year. Fisker was awarded a $529 million loan under an Obama administration program designed to spur production of advanced technology vehicles. Fisker drew about $193 million of the Energy Department loan to engineer its Karma luxury plug-in hybrid. But a plan to retool the former GM factory to build a second model, now called the Atlantic, was delayed . . .
Another Solyndra? This time with up to $2.1 billion at stake

Another Solyndra? This time with up to $2.1 billion at stake

From the Washington Examiner:
Solar Trust for America received $2.1 billion in conditional loan guarantees from the Department of Energy -- "the largest amount ever offered to a solar project," according to Energy Secretary Steven Chu -- for a project near Blythe, Calif., but declared bankruptcy within a year. It is unclear how much of the guarantee, if any, was actually awarded. Senior officials in Obama's administration had very high hopes for the Blythe project. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar attended the groundbreaking ceremony, which he described as "a historic moment in America’s new energy frontier" and "another important step in making America’s clean energy future a reality." Chu trumpeted at the time that Solar Trust would prove that "when we rev up the great American innovation machine, we can out-compete any other nation." . . .
At the same time Fisker Automotive is having trouble.
Fisker Automotive's new chief executive, Tom LaSorda, said the luxury electric-vehicle company is looking at alternatives to building its second model in a former General Motors Co. GM -4.56% plant in Delaware, raising the possibility of abandoning a plan that had financial backing from the Obama administration. Mr. LaSorda also said Fisker is looking for strategic partners as part of its effort to raise new funds to replace a federal loan that was frozen earlier this year. Fisker was awarded a $529 million loan under an Obama administration program designed to spur production of advanced technology vehicles. Fisker drew about $193 million of the Energy Department loan to engineer its Karma luxury plug-in hybrid. But a plan to retool the former GM factory to build a second model, now called the Atlantic, was delayed . . .
Top Obama officials involved in deciding whether to keep Solyndra from going into bankruptcy

Top Obama officials involved in deciding whether to keep Solyndra from going into bankruptcy

Are top political appointees in the WH typically involved in such loan decisions? From the Hill newspaper:

The company collapsed at the end of August 2011 and filed for bankruptcy in early September. The Hill has reported previously on the administration decision not to attempt a last-ditch financial rescue.

White House internal communications during the company's final days include an email about a planned meeting to discuss Solyndra on August 29, 2011. Heather Zichal, a senior energy policy aide, and Deputy OMB Director Jeffrey Zients were slated to brief other officials.

The list of optional attendees included several high-level officials, such as then-Domestic Policy Council Director Melody Barnes and Nancy-Ann DeParle, another senior adviser to the president. . . .
Obama on Solyndra: “But understand: This was not our program per se.”

Obama on Solyndra: “But understand: This was not our program per se.”

Even ABC News is a bit incredulous. This sounds a lot like Obama claiming all economists supported his Stimulus program.

“Are you doing your ‘all-of-the-above’ strategy right if that’s what we have to show for it — Solyndra?” asked Kai Ryssdal, host of “Marketplace” on American Public Media, in an interview with Obama.
The solar energy start-up Solyndra, which had been the poster child of Obama’s initiative, went bankrupt in 2011, putting 1,000 employees out of work. It had received more than $500 million in federal loan guarantees through a Recovery Act program. The loan process is now the subject of a congressional investigation.
“Obviously, we wish Solyndra hadn’t gone bankrupt,” Obama said. “But understand: This was not our program per se.”
“Congress — Democrats and Republicans — put together a loan guarantee program because they understood historically that when you get new industries, it’s easy to raise money for start-ups, but if you want to take them to scale, oftentimes there’s a lot of risk involved, and what the loan guarantee program was designed to do was to help start up companies get to scale,” he said.
Obama mischaracterizes congressional support for the program, however. The loan to Solyndra was not part of a program developed by both Republicans and Democrats. Rather, it was entirely funded through the 2009 Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which did not receive any GOP votes. . . .
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