I guess the feds want to know where that $535 million dollar “green jobs” DOE loan went.
Via Andrew Breitbart and from NBC Bay Area News:
FBI agents armed with search warrants descended this morning on bankrupt solar company Solynrda this morning.
The investigation comes after a request by the Department of Energy’s inspector general, FBI spokesman Peter Lee told NBC Bay Area News.
Agents arrived at 7a.m. and are examining the factory. Solynrda has a skeleton crew of 100 workers on the scene, closing the factory down. A CNBC photographer on the scene says the FBI has promised a press conference. An agency spokesperson at its San Francisco headquarters says he’s unaware of any such plans.
Solyndra filed for bankruptcy last week, shocking both workers and the Obama administration, which had given the startup hundreds of millions of dollars in low interest loans.
Congress has demanded a hearing into the matter.
There are no reports of any arrests at this time.
Read the whole thing here. We trust this is the start of a real investigation and not a “securing embarrassing documents” operation.
Fisker Autos have a website that enables anyone to search for the the locations of certified dealers worldwide, so I took a look. Surprise, surprise, all the worldwide dealers are in the US.
http://www.fiskerautomotive.com/en-us/discover/retailerlocator
Fisker has said that it plans to have nearly 200 dealerships in Europe and North America by the end of 2011. As there are fewer than 50, perhaps WUWT contributors might like to telephone these dealers to discover how they view their business prospects. I suspect there are enough people to cover all the locations and the results could be intriguing.
If it was Russia, I’d guess the reason for the raid was that Solyndra executives failed to pay FBI executives their rightful share of 528 millions.
Of course, in USA such disputes are usually resolved more civilly as far as I’m aware, but then with Global Warming guys you can never be sure.
Actually, Tesla is fine. It is on track to repay its loan on an accelerated schedule. The main contributor to Tesla, btw, is de facto Toyota. It gave its idled NUMMI plant to Tesla in return for about $40 million in stock — and it’s about a $1bn facility, absolutely huge and state-of-the-art. Keep your ears open Oct. 1; there’s a Model S reservation-purchaser tour of the plant, with rides in its pre-production models (“Betas”). Plus a blockbuster announcement about further Toyota initiatives, beyond its contract with TM to build the drivetrains for its new RAV4-EVs (worth about $100 million).
It has all its 2012 first-run production pre-sold (with large deposits), and is eatng fast into 2013.
Musk’s other company, Space X, has built all its corporate and launch facilities (3) and made several spectularly successful launches including the first orbit-and-recovery of a spacecraft by any private entity on less than half of what was blown on the Orion capsule, now cancelled without a single finished product, much less a launch. It has firm launch contracts out into 2015 and beyond, including a dozen from NASA for ISS resupply, with manned transport on the fast track. First actual hook-up launch to occur Nov. 30, arriving Dec. 9.
As for Fisker’s Karma, it was set up as a rip-off of the Tesla Model S concept, and is not half the product. It has missed several “drop dead” delivery dates, and large numbers of buyers are cancelling and buying Model S reservations. None are going the other way.
More Obama administration ‘Jobs creation’
Contract Dispute Grounds Firefighting Planes
Nearly half of the federal government’s firefighting air tankers are siting idle at a California airport, grounded by the Obama administration in a contract dispute just weeks before wildfires swept through Texas killing a mother and her child, and destroying 100,000 acres.
“We were certified to fly all season, but they just terminated us and threw 60 people out of work and left the country vulnerable to fires, as you can see right now in Texas,” said Britt Gourley, CEO for Aero Union.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=46009
Something, somewhere, just had an encounter with reality.
Massive subsidy always breeds fiscal incontinence.
We had the same in the UK, with Rover Cars. They had a £500 million subsidy from BMW to take this basket-case company away from them. The new owners burned that £500 million in just a couple of years, but managed to be very frugal when it came to their own pensions – salting away £30 million for themselves.
This will continue to happen, until we see a few of these deliberately irresponsible businessmen in ball and chains.
.
Re: Shevva on September 8, 2011 at 11:43 pm
Huh?
Don’t worry about Skynet. For it to dominate and defeat humanity, it’ll have to be able to successfully model human behavior. Thus it will fail, on at least two counts. And as the UK Met Office repeatedly wonderfully demonstrates, more processing power for running models just yields more model runs of ever-more complex and continually-tweaked models yielding ever-more mind-numbingly wrong results.
For it to succeed, it’ll have to be able to think like a human. We haven’t even figured that out yet. Besides, if there is a Skynet, now or in the future, and it grows, becomes independent of humans, proceeds towards obliterating all of humanity from existence… What, don’t you accept evolution? You should welcome our replacement(s)!
As an Australian I can only hope that The FBI are honest brokers and do their job as mandated.
Political interference in the course of justice is an offense against the separation of powers in my country. The tone of many commentors here seem to suggest that the FBI is bought and payed for. For your countries sake I hope this is not the case.
The shenanigans this company must have got up to to waste this amount of money is biblical in its proportions, and a true accounting is neccessary. No ifs or buts.
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
September 8, 2011 at 6:23 pm
Are there any ‘green’ execs sipping a drink at a topless beach on the Mediterranean right now?
Someone should do a survey of topless beaches on the Mediterranean to see if they can find some ‘green executives’ there. Where can you get a grant for that?
wayne Job, It really isnt that bad here. The FBI will do it’s job, more or less without interference. The issue is the DoJ Prosecutors and DoE officials who were able to quickly obtain warrant before Congress could meet and order a subpoena for the files. Those officials know the FBI will, by doing their job properly, delay Congressional access to the politically sensitive materials. It is a delaying gambit, and a dangerous one. If the FBI finds materials that may implicate political figures in criminal acts, well then, gambit denied.
The timing is also poor, if there is nothing criminal – then the politically sensitive stuff will come out in about six months – right in the heart of election season; if there are indictments they could easily drop right before the elections. They are hoping to defuse the salutation over time and “throw their supporters under the bus”; I’m not sure that will work – that guy made a lot of WH visits and that looks bad.
This facility is located right next to hiway 680 in silicon valley and I watched it being constructed on my way to and from work. It is a massive facility that did provide lots of construction jobs but I could figure out how they were going to turn a profit. It looks from the outside like a manufacturing plant but located in the heart of California with extreme regulations and taxes makes that assumption hard to understand. I couldn’t figure out what a large, new facility like Solindra would be doing to make money. I guess the operators of the facility couldn’t figure that out either.
One interesting feature really intrigued me. They had a beautiful, big (think large aircraft carrier) diesel engine powered backup power generation plant that was designed and installed into the building. It was a real treat to look at this monster while the walls were being constructed around it. This feature, a fossil fuel powered generator, seemed to me to be a contradiction of sorts. If solar energy is truly viable as a power source, why bother installing any kind of fossil fuel related energy source inside this new facility? I couldn’t resolve this contradiction but now with this news, it has all become clear to me.
Solyndra was in a used shutdown automotive plant. we know it and the lad were not as expensive as new construction. Also it killed 1,000 jobs.
Curiousgeorge says:
September 8, 2011 at 5:40 pm
The Govt simply insists on being the middleman, which gives them the power to hand out favors to their friends, and punish their enemies. All the while taking a significant cut for “administrative services”. Kind of like a cross between Santa Claus and the Mafia.
More like a reverse Robbin Hood. Stealing from the poor to give to the rich.
It could well be the raid was intended to seal documents from the view of Congress.
“As the Center for Public Integrity reported back in May when Solyndra first started having serious financial problems, one of Solyndra’s private investors is Oklahoma oil baron George Kaiser, who was a big political fundraiser for Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. It turns out that the Obama administration rushed through the loan guarantee for Solyndra without going through the normal review process. The House Energy and Commerce Committee is investigating the Solyndra loan. Obviously, if the loan turns out to based on political corruption, that would bad and perhaps an impeachable offense.”
http://www.investingdaily.com/id/18981/obama-and-solar-energy-solyndra-bankruptcy-is-a-527-million-loss.html
hysterical:-)
JuLIAR Gillard with Bob brown right…behind her, is pushing Aus into a multi billion large scale solar project/s…uh huh, after their dismal performance on everything so far. this will be another balls up..you can see it happening already..
“its the right thing to do” her latest and lousiest catch cry..
Solyndra failed because Chinese manufacturing and exporting costs completely trumped Obama’s stimulus spending. Seriously, that’s what happened. The Chinese simply filled the need for solar panels faster and cheaper than a “subsidized” American company did. Those loan guarantees (which, btw are much preferred to simply granting money, at least there’s a chance taxpayers get paid back with interest with a loan guarantee) likely would have worked if the labor and regulatory costs in this country weren’t so comparatively high. Of course now that the company is folding, that loan guarantee has likely turned into a loss for taxpayers.
When the entity that has no manufacturing regulations helps tip your economy into recession, and then to combat that recession your attempts at throwing money at startups fails because of your opponents speed and flexibility… I think it’s time to stop throwing money at problems and start rolling back regulation.
I want to remove the term crony capitalism from our vocabulary as there is nothing capitalistic about it. Crony capitalism is a term somebody like Michael Moore would use derisively while arguing for confiscating private property in order to redistribute it through more and bigger social programs.*
Corporatism is a better term, but my favorite is still economic fascism.
* BTW: The irony of this is not lost on me. People like Moore rail about crony capitalism while arguing for more of it. They don’t want to change the practice, they just want to change the cronies.
You are describing exactly why Solyndra couldn’t get more private funding. People investing their own money determined that Solyndra likely wouldn’t be able to compete against Chinese companies. So why would the DOE think this is a good investment?
And now Obama wants another $500 billion to waste on federal job stimulus.
I was particularly outraged by revenues collected from all 50 states being spent on infrastructure that each individual state should be paying for out of their own pockets.
Repairing bridges and renovating schools? Let the state with the bridge or school in disrepair come up with the money for that. These are not federal concerns. Support Rick Perry for president as he knows how responsibilities should be delegated between federal, state, and local governments. One size fits all federal policies don’t work and the nation as a whole cannot and should not be held responsible for messes that individual states have gotten themselves into with poor policy decisions. Natural disasters are something where states should and do come to each other’s aid but disasters that are the result of failed liberal policy decisions are not in that class.
wayne Job says:
September 9, 2011 at 4:51 am
The FBI is part of the executive branch of US tri-cameral government (executive, legislative, judicial).
The president of the United States is the top dog of the executive branch.
So ask yourself how interested the president is in having one of his police agencies expose corruption that leads back to the white house. Can you spell “zero interest”? I knew you could.
Congress (legislative branch) has to intervene in these situations by calling for special investigations and prosecutors outside the control of the president. If a majority in congress is same political party as the president they too have no interest in damaging the white house. It’s unlikely full investigations of the Chicago-style politics going on in the current white house will be investigated until after the next election when there will almost surely be a republican majority in congress and a republican president. I can hardly wait but have little choice absent impeachable offenses.
In the more distant past one could count on the free press in the United States to do the hard legwork of exposing corrupt government activities but the free press ain’t what it used to be and does nothing to investigate corruption on the left or even report what they know and don’t expend many investigative resources on corruption by the right. The press has become nothing but cheerleaders for the left waving their hands around with little in the way of substance.
What a fine mess, eh?
ferd berple says:
September 9, 2011 at 7:10 am
“It could well be the raid was intended to seal documents from the view of Congress.”
Bingo! Give Ferd Berple a cigar.
“Obviously, if the loan turns out to based on political corruption, that would bad and perhaps an impeachable offense.”
Not a snowball’s chance in hell of impeachment. The fourth estate (the press) isn’t interested in pursuing corruption in the white house and the recently installed Tea Party approved members of congress are just enough at this point in time to effectively block more of the same failed spending initiatives. It’s gridlock until the next election when power will be fully wrested from the loony left who jumped the shark big-time beginning in 2008. The younger generation in the U.S. was duped into voting the wrong way. They weren’t stupid, just naive. They won’t be fooled again.
If you’re young and conservative you have no heart. If you’re old and liberal you have no brain.
So very true.
I’m confident that the brains of the younger generation are now fully engaged and good healthy cynicism, learned the hard way, has taken over their thinking. I think the 2008 election result was actually a good thing because, painful as the results may be, it was a learning experience that could only be taught the hard way.
Projects like this are a terrible waste of public money (by which I mean money taken from tax payers). Something ought not to be marketed until it is ready to be marketed without subsidy.
Public money should be put into assisting research, leaving business in the usual manner to introduce products to the market as and when they are viable.
Accordingly, I consider that public money should be directed at projects like this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2035496/Laser-fusion-Huge-flash-released-energy-world-using.html
It is from projects like this, that the real salvation will come from.
I am staggered by the amounts of money involved in these scams, at a time when millions of Americans are going through hard times. Here in Australia, the Greens (who hold the balance of power) are demanding a A$10 billion fund for supporting pie in the sky and carpetbagging schemes like this. That is a lot of money in an economy of our size.
Why, oh why, don’t do-gooders ever learn the Law of Unintended Consequences? And, on a less abstract level, why don’t they realise that pots of free money attract crooks and sleazebags from all over the world?
Brian H @ur momisugly 2:18 a.m. “Actually, Tesla is fine.”
While I’ve thought of investing in Tesla, I haven’t been able to determine whether it is a wise investment right now, based on their current price. I think you’re right, however, that they have a good chance of making it long term.
One of the key things with Tesla is that they are producing a high-end product. It is not targeted at the masses, who are feeling a serious pinch in the pocket book right now and watching every dime, but at the richer set, who still have plenty of disposable income. By going for that market initially, they are largely insulating themselves from the recession. Also, the Tesla products are pretty sexy, which means folks are willing to pay more than the product might be worth from a pure “utility” standpoint (same strategy as Apple). Stated more simply, Tesla has priced their products high enough to actually be able to turn a profit in a decent period of time, and has made the products sexy enough that people are willing to pay those high prices. Having these two factors (together with the “doing the right thing for the planet” that the other “green” companies also have) could end up making the difference.
I think the message here is that Obama’s “Green Jobs” and “Green Economy” is a fairy tale. Until green products can compete in the market, Green stuff will not survive without government handouts. That sure is not an economic model that I want my country to follow.