Wednesday, September 14, 2011

White House ignored red flags in loan to failed solar company

The Obama administration committed more than $500 million in taxpayer money to a maker of solar power panels despite repeated red flags about the company’s viability, NBC News’ Lisa Myers reported Wednesday.

The FBI raided the Silicon Valley headquarters of the company, Solyndra, last week, investigating whether the government was misled when it loaned the company $535 million in taxpayer funds. Solyndra officials say they are cooperating with the investigation.

Solyndra received the loan guarantees in 2009 as part of President Barack Obama’s promise to create millions of so-called "green" jobs. But last month, Solyndra declared bankruptcy, laying off all 1,100 workers.

“The evidence seems to be pretty clear to even the non-lawyer types that this smelled from the very get-go, that this was a really bad deal,” said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

A committee panel, which has been looking into the company for months, will hold a hearing Wednesday on what went wrong with Solyndra. Two company executives are expected to appear before the panel next week, The Associated Press reported.
Read the rest here.

2 comments:

Ingemar said...

Our government, people! Giving money it doesn't have to firms that no longer exist.

I speak loosely but you get the gist.

Anonymous said...

No, they didn't "ignore" the red flags, they have such an utterly abysmal grasp on capitalist economics they had absolutely no clue what they were looking at.

Nikolaus