Obama will not accept responsibility for anything. I say anything because everything he touches turns to horse shit. Marketplace's Kai Ryssdal : With all respect, it was kind of a gutsy move I think to come to a solar facility. Your administration has staked a lot on clean technology, green jobs. The biggest item most people know about that strategy is, of course, a company named Solyndra, which your administration gave loan guarantees to, that then went bankrupt and has been the subject of many investigations. Are you doing your "all of the above" strategy right if that's what we have to show for it -- Solyndra? Obama: We are doing the "all of the above" strategy right. Obviously, we wish Solyndra hadn't gone bankrupt. Part of the reason they did was because the Chinese were subsidizing their solar industry and flooding the market in ways that Solyndra couldn't compete. 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 startups, 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. And the understanding is is that some companies are not going to succeed, some companies will do very well -- but the portfolio as a whole ends up supporting the kind of innovation that helps make America successful in this innovative 21st century economy. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/vi...solyndra_this_was_not_our_program_per_se.html
And yet, what he actually said, vs what you said he said, is correct. The Chinese ARE subsidizing their solar industry. Thus new tariffs on those imports were instituted. Once again, you've started another stupid, baseless thread based on nothing other than your ill-informed, knee-jerk, partisan hatred and not much else.
A 90 second search of Google by the energy secretary would have saved the taxpayers 500 million dollars. The OP is right. Obama is not capable of being responsible for Bo the dog much less the folly of his own executive decisions.
futurecurrents - It was known they were on a course to failure long before Obama and Chu gave them half a billion of our dollars. So go fuck yourself!
I know it must make you angry to be a rabid parrot of right-wing rhetoric without really knowing much, but really the cursing should stop Maybe you should read this. Yeah this was all Chu and Obama.....riiiiiiiight. Solyndra Raised $1 Billion In Private Capital. Time noted that "in addition to government loan guarantees, Solyndra also scored over $1 billion in private capital--including from GOP-friendly investors like the Walton family of Wal-Mart." [Time, 9/15/11] WSJ Ranked Solyndra As The Top U.S. Clean Tech Company. In 2010, the Wall Street Journal ranked Solyndra the top clean-tech company with the "capital, executive experience and investor know-how to succeed in an increasingly crowded field." The "research firm VentureSource (owned by NewsCorp., which also owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Journal) calculated the rankings, applying a set of financial criteria to some 350 U.S.-based venture-backed businesses in clean technology." [Wall Street Journal, 3/7/10] WSJ Also Ranked Solyndra In Top Five "Next Big" Venture-Backed Companies. The Wall Street Journal ranked Solyndra number five in a list of the "top 50 venture-backed companies." The rankings were calculated based on "the track record of success for the venture-capital investors who sit on the company's board (Board Ranking); the amount of capital raised by the company over the last three years, in comparison to its peers (Total Equity Ranking); the track record of success for the company's founders and chief executive (Executive Ranking);" "the recent growth in the value of the company (Valuation Ranking)" and the rankings of Dow Jones venture capital reporters and editors. [Wall Street Journal, 3/9/10] MIT's Technology Review Chose Solyndra As One Of The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies. The Technology Review evaluated companies based on their "business model, strategies for deploying and scaling up its technologies, and the likelihood of success." [Technology Review, 2/23/10] Analyst Cited Solyndra As A Company That Could Have A "Breakthrough Around Cost And Efficiency." From an April 2009 San Jose Mercury News report: Reuters: Venture Capitalists Point To Solyndra As One Of The Top 10 Companies "Ripest" To Go Public. Reuters reported in August 2009: An informal poll of venture capitalists and others pointed to six privately held companies as the ripest for acquisition or readiness to go public, out of 34 cited in industries ranging from alternative energy to social networking. For now, the Silicon Valley Six say they intend to keep growing rather than agreeing to be acquired or go public during the recession. The top four are business social network LinkedIn, solar panel maker Solyndra, smart grid company Silver Spring, and Zynga, a casual games company whose products run on social networks like Facebook. [Reuters, 8/19/09, via CNNMoney] Market Conditions Shifted Significantly from 2009 to 2011. A Bloomberg News report noted that Solyndra had "advantages that were more important in 2009 when it received a $535 million U.S. loan guarantee to build a factory" than they are now, noting that the price of the silicon-based panels with which Solyndra was competing "has fallen 46 percent since then. " The article also quoted Julian Hawking of Abound Solar Inc., who stated: "When Solyndra started up it was a completely different time for the industry. Nobody expected the huge drop in polysilicon prices." [Bloomberg, 9/14/11] http://mediamatters.org/research/201109190020
Liberals like futurecurrents have a tough time keeping up on current events. As it scrambled to save the flagship company of the Obama administration's green energy program, the Energy Department ignored repeated warnings from top Treasury Department officials that it was not following guidelines in refinancing Solyndra's half-billion dollar federal loan, a Congressional hearing Friday revealed. When the DOE refinanced the government's $535 million loan to the California solar panel manufacturer in February, it agreed to let investors, including a major Obama fundraiser, stand in line before the public to recoup the first $75 million of their investment should the company fail. Solyndra declared bankruptcy six weeks ago. During a House Energy and Commerce hearing on the refinancing of the loan Friday, Rep. Cliff Stearns, R.-Florida, chairman of the Committee's Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, asked Treasury Department CFO Gary Burner if he had ever seen another case where taxpayer money was subordinated to that of investors. "No sir, I have not," said Burner, who has been with the department for 28 years, becoming chief financial officer five years ago. Internal Treasury Department documents released by the committee also show that officials warned DOE and the White House about the refinancing. The refinancing is one piece in a long string of favorable terms the government granted to Solyndra, a start-up solar panel firm that secured the Energy Department's first loan guarantee in March 2009 in what was touted as a signature project for the green energy movement. DOE pressed ahead with that financing -- and everyone from Energy Secretary Steven Chu to President Obama made personal trips to the California plant -- despite repeated red flags the loan was a risky bet. Now the company has collapsed and Congress, the FBI and the inspectors general of the Energy and Treasury departments are all investigating the loan. The head of the Energy Department's loan program and Solyndra's CEO have both resigned in recent weeks. Some Energy and Commerce Committee members, including Stearns, contend the DOE violated the Energy Policy Act of 2005 during the refinancing by putting investors in line before taxpayers to recoup any recovered funds. Those investors -- including a major fundraiser for President Obama, George Kaiser -- provided $75 million to help prop up Solyndra in February at the time of the government's refinancing. "This seems to me a clear violation of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which says DOE shall consult with OMB and the Secretary of the Treasury before granting any deviation in the loan," said Fred Upton, R-Michigan, chair of the committee. "Putting the taxpayers at the back of the line behind private investors in the event of liquidation is not only a deviation, it is apparently unprecedented." An internal Office of Management and Budget email released by the committee shows that OMB officials were also unsure whether the restructuring followed the law. "There are some questions at the staff level about how DOE is going about the restructuring for Solyndra," says the email, in reference to moving private investors to the front of the line for reimbursement. "I think they have stretched this definition beyond its limits." Story continues but you get the point. http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/solyndra-energy-dept-warning-treasury-official/story?id=14739148