From the Fiscal Times: Solyndra Went on a Spending Spree After Getting Loan
Former employees of Solyndra, the shuttered solar company that exhausted half a billion dollars of taxpayer money, said they saw questionable spending by management almost as soon as a federal agency approved a $535 million government-backed loan for the start-up.
A new factory built with public money boasted a gleaming conference room with glass walls that, with the flip of a switch, turned a smoky gray to conceal the room’s occupants. Hastily purchased state-of-the-art equipment ended up being sold for pennies on the dollar, still in its plastic wrap, employees said.
As the $344 million factory went up just down the road from the company’s leased plant in Fremont, Calif., workers watched as pallets of unsold solar panels stacked up in storage. Many wondered: Was the factory needed?
“After we got the loan guarantee, they were just spending money left and right,” said former Solyndra engineer Lindsey Eastburn. “Because we were doing well, nobody cared. Because of that infusion of money, it made people sloppy.”
…
On Friday, company executives are scheduled to appear before a House committee investigating how Solyndra obtained its loan and whether the Obama White House rushed its approval for political reasons. Chief Executive Officer Brian Harrison and Chief Financial Officer Bill Stover were supposed to face a grilling about the company’s spending and collapse, but they announced Tuesday that they would assert their Fifth Amendment rights because of a criminal probe of the company by the Justice Department.
Full story at the Fiscal Times h/t to Tom Nelson
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What should concern us all is that very little of this so-called “stimulus” money was actually spent on creating jobs. Jobs in the U.S. I mean. I hear a lot of it ended up in China and other countries. I suspect a lot of it will eventually make its way back into Democrat Party coffers in the guise of “union dues” and other money-laundering tricks.
What astonished everyone was how quickly the company went belly up. Perhaps it would have been better had the country purchased the unsold panels for all those solar parking structures we’re seeing out here rather than having the $535 billion just go up in smoke.
This story has legs. Even the green-washed CBC knows it, and I only hope that the Climategate story can ride the coattails of this one.
If you find a bag full of money, what do you do with it? (make that a green recycled bag)
Don’t worry if we run out of your money…we’ll tax the rich….
I’m unsure on this. Silicon fab plants are expensive. Very expensive. The likes of Intel and AMD spend $10-$20bn on each new plant. Obviously solar panels are not on the same scale as this, but I don’t know if $350m to set one up is excessive or not.
Very few private companies should be supported by the government because if something is viable, it will get developed and sell itself, which so far most “green industry” ideas wll not. The above article also shows how bad politicians are and how they waste our tax dollars on a daily basis.
I know exactly what the former employees must be feeling. I saw this sort of abuses at former working places. The worst part is that often the officers go out and do it all over again, no consequences and employees and shareholders are left behind. Disgusting work and moral ethics will make you rich in this world.
I don’t know why anyone should be shocked. I doubt anything was actually illegal, except maybe if they were planning an IPO, in which case the SEC might have had something on them.
what’s nice about the Solyndra debacle is that it puts a fine point on the true goal of the entire AGW movement – which is to enable a governmental and corporate theft of hundreds of billions of dollars.
Why, if they make it sound noble, it won’t be called theft! And hence you have people saying “well don’t condemn the solar industry because of Solyndra.”
Well, Yes. Yes I will. I condemn anything which cannot survive without endless and massive government subsidies as far as the mind can comprehend. The entire AGW movement truly is the most massive Fraud in modern history, and here for the entire world to see is the purpose of that Fraud.
Theft, plain and simple. Not some grand political conspiracy – just old fashioned theft.
How lucky we are that the subsidies paid to oil companies are not squandered in the same way!
(sarc off)
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9N5V0VG2.htm
U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., is proposing to end what he says are $4 billion a year in tax subsidies to the biggest oil companies.
This is exactly the problem with the merging objectives in a private-public partnership. Standing on its own Solyndra would have been conserving capital, and not open the new facility unless needed. However, the government objective was “stimulus” and also to have something tangible that the government could show that they accomplished something. It is a testament to how bad this green jobs farce is that this blew up so quickly.
Follow the money , there are all sorts of ways you spread the cash to friends and family when you got a bucket load of government cash burning a hole in your pocket. And if your smart you can make money on the way down too, buy dear sell back cheap , buy what you don’t actual need sell cheap to someone else , a nice fat and legally binding contract which pays off even if no work was done etc.
Tom says:
September 26, 2011 at 8:35 am
I’m unsure on this. Silicon fab plants are expensive. Very expensive. The likes of Intel and AMD spend $10-$20bn on each new plant. Obviously solar panels are not on the same scale as this, but I don’t know if $350m to set one up is excessive or not.
Any amount spent on new plant is excessive if you are well aware ahead of time that you have no conceivable market for the products it is being built to produce.
This story reminds me of Al Gore, Maurice Strong (currently an advisor to China) and the Molten Metal scam. How anyone can believe these PROVEN conmen I cannot understand.
The Molten Metal Scam: http://windfarms.wordpress.com/2008/07/20/al-groe-and-maurice-strong-con-artists-extordinaire/
On the first“Earth Day, April 17, 1995 when the future author of An Inconvenient Truth traveled to Fall River, Massachusetts, to deliver a green sermon at the headquarters of Molten Metal Technology Inc. (MMTI). MMTI was a firm that proclaimed to have invented a process for recycling metals from waste.Gore praised the Molten Metal firm as a pioneer in the kind of innovative technology that can save the environment, and make money for investors at the same time.
“Gore left a few facts out of his speech that day. First, the firm was run by Strong and a group of Gore intimates, including Peter Knight, the firm’s registered lobbyist, and Gore’s former top Senate aide,” wrote EIR.
“Second, the company had received more than $25 million in U.S. Department of energy (DOE) research and development grants, but had failed to prove that the technology worked on a commercial scale. The company would go on to receive another $8 million in federal taxpayers’ cash, at that point, its only source of revenue.
“With Al Gore’s Earth Day as a Wall Street calling card, Molten Metal’s stock value soared to $35 a share, a range it maintained through October 1996. But along the way, DOE scientists had balked at further funding. When, in March 1996, corporate officers concluded that the federal cash cow was about to run dry, they took action: Between that date and October 1996, seven corporate officers–including Maurice Strong–sold off $15.3 million in personal shares in the company, at top market value. On Oct. 20, 1996–a Sunday–the company issued a press release, announcing for the first time, that DOE funding would be vastly scaled back, and reported the bad news on a conference call with stockbrokers.
“On Monday, the stock plunged by 49%, soon landing at $5 a share.By early 1997, furious stockholders had filed a class action suit against the company and its directors. Ironically, one of the class action lawyers had tangled with Maurice Strong in another insider trading case, involving a Swiss company called AZL Resources, chaired by Strong, who was also a lead shareholder….”
So now we have the third “musketeer” of the Chicago Climate Exchange, Obama pulling yet another scam.
Isn’t Three times enough already….. Oh make that four. I forgot the Oil For Food Scam that has Maurice Strong hiding out in China. http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20050908/maurice_strong_oil_iraq_050908/
This is only the tip of the government waste iceberg. Our government climate scientist friends got millions of dollars for their projects (including salary increases) in the name of “stimulus”.
And the forecast for the climate scientists for 2012? GOOD TIMES!
See here…
“The 2012 Budget sustains the President’s commitment to global-change research as part of a
government-wide effort to understand, predict, mitigate, and adapt to climate change and
transition the United States to a clean-energy economy. Investments in climate science over the
past several decades have contributed to an improved understanding of global climate and our
changing planet. The 2012 Budget provides $2.6 billion for the multi-agency U.S. Global
Change Research Program (USGCRP), an increase of 20.3 percent or $446 million over the
2010 enacted level.”
By the way, look at the first bar chart in this report. Notice the pink bar at the top of 2009. Guess what that was? That’s right – the “Recovery Act” aka stimulus. So while you and I were suffering through one of the worst economic years in recent memory, our climate friends were getting their budgets increased by $0.5 BILLION over and above their appropriated increases!!!
The illegality came when the White House pushed the folks making the loan to do so without due diligence. Those reviewing the company’s financial status predicted the collapse almost to the day.
“Steve R says:
September 26, 2011 at 8:39 am
I don’t know why anyone should be shocked. I doubt anything was actually illegal, except maybe if they were planning an IPO, in which case the SEC might have had something on them.”
Tom says:
September 26, 2011 at 8:35 am
I’m unsure on this. Silicon fab plants are expensive. Very expensive. The likes of Intel and AMD spend $10-$20bn on each new plant. Obviously solar panels are not on the same scale as this, but I don’t know if $350m to set one up is excessive or not.
The Solyndra technology was based on non-silicon manufacturing process. Their bet was on continued high silicon pricing. Silicon market crashed after Solyndra statred up and as we all know – Solyndra is history now.
I count four US based solar companies that have closed or filed for bankruptcy this year alone. Of course Solyndra, Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt – (Intel Spinoff company), and Solon North America.
They pay people to make it……our money
They pay people to buy it…….our money
They pay people to install it….our money
They pay people to use it……our money
you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here……
…closing time
It is a very good example of what happens when the government intrudes into the private sector. We saw it in the housing / banking industries. The health care industry has priced itself out of reach of the average household. They are running an unsustainable program for mandatory retirement accounts.
Now they think they should use money, that someone had to earn, to fund stupid venture capital programs, that just happen to benefit supporters of the administration. Did we need government funding to start any of the fortune 500 companies? I doubt there is any example where this has worked in the past.
Limited government is what made this country great, and if we don’t return to that concept, there is only two possible outcomes. And the one we want, involves defying everything we know, about human behavior.
izen says-
“U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., is proposing to end what he says are $4 billion a year in tax subsidies to the biggest oil companies.”
That $4B amounts to 1.6 cents per gallon of gasoline.
Did Schumer also propose an end to Federal, state and local gasoline taxes to ‘even the playing field’?
Did Schumer also propose an equivalent tax on solar and wind energy to ‘even the playing field?’
Didn’t think so.
The bankruptcy of Solyndra was probably intentional. It was, certainly, foreseen long before it happened, witness the loan restructuring that occurred in February, which happened to put the public on the bottom of the repayment list.
Who killed US Enterprise – Congress, States (esp. Kalifornia), EPA, ALF-CIO, Congress, States (esp. Kalifornia), EPA, ALF-CIO, Congress, States (esp. Kalifornia), EPA, ALF-CIO, Congress, States (esp. Kalifornia), EPA, ALF-CIO,…
It’s very “Circuler”.
Latitude says:
September 26, 2011 at 9:21 am
They pay people to make it……our money
They pay people to buy it…….our money
They pay people to install it….our money
They pay people to use it……our money
=========================================================
Of course, the story doesn’t stop there. All of this was done to produce a more expensive, less reliable form of energy, in order to bilk the public out of even more capital.