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Solyndra's High-tech Plant To Be Sold
Velcroman1 writes, quoting Fox News: "For sale: manufacturing and office facility with 411,618 square feet, state of the art electrical, air, and power distribution systems — and a troubled past. As part of its bankruptcy proceedings, Solyndra is reportedly very close to landing a buyer for its mammoth, high-tech production plant in Fremont, Calif. The listing agent recently gave Fox News a tour of what the new owners will get for their multi-million dollar investment. Now the once-bustling offices, conference rooms, and cubicles are eerily quiet as the facility is 'decommissioned,' according to Greg Matter with Jones Lang LaSalle realty. One wonders about the conversations held, and emails written, in the corner office formerly occupied by CEO Brian Harrison."
"One wonders about the conversations held, and emails written, in the corner office formerly occupied by CEO Brian Harrison."
i'll give you the short version: "How can we milk the government for more money?!?"
What a failure, so many better things that we could have done with that money.
In this case the company got dumped on by the Chinese.
Investment is inherently risky. But we have to invest in our future. Some of those investments will go bust. The ones that don't , like the internet, pay for the ones that do many many many times over.
The only people making a whipping boy of this company are people who 1) reflexively hate anything the President has done or 2) work for oil and gas companies.
Without bankruptcy society would have no way of cutting losses and moving forward. Much more resources and labor would go into paying off debts that have no hope of ever getting repaid. There would be much less incentives to take risks on new ideas and innovations, and less money to do it with as the majority of money earned would be used for servicing debt. When someone or some entity is so in debt that they'll never be able to repay it all, the best thing for society as a whole is to wipe the slate clean and then not loan any more money to that entity for a time.
It seems we only apply the last part to natural persons of the working and middle classes.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Good god, do you get your news from SNL? His point was that Corporations are made up of people. Lots of people. People who pay taxes, send their kids to school, invest in their company, invest in others. His point was that Corporations are not faceless entities (which are easier to demonize-- you know, the big boogie man who'll get you if you don't vote for me?).
When something like this happens, I have to wonder if it isn't a shell game, to wit:
1) Company A builds a big expensive ultra modern plant, using investor and/or tax monies.
2) Company A is run into the ground, files for bankrupcy
3) Assets are sold at fire-sale prices to company B, which is ultimately, through very complicated and difficult-to-trace machinations, owned by the same people who originally owned company A.
4) The owners essentially get to keep what they've managed to squirrel away while the company was crashing, and then buy back their facilities for a song, just coincidentally free from any loan or investor obligations.
5) Profit!
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Good god, do you get your news from SNL? His point was that Corporations are made up of people. Lots of people.
So, you are saying that what Romeny really meant was that Corporations are Soylent Green?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Let's look at his response to that. Try the 3rd paragraph...
MITT ROMNEY: Hold on. It’s my turn. You’ve had your turn. Now it’s my turn, all right? First of all, you’re right it goes to dividends, all right, which is to the owners. But they’re not the 1 percent. All right? They’re not only the 1 percent. I’m sure, among the dividends, go to the 1 percent, but also go to the people who have pensions. All right? There’s a guy. You don’t—are you in the 1 percent? No. He’s got dividends and retirement plans, 401(k)s. They’re filled of the dividends that come out from corporations. That’s number one.
Number two, you are right, they can go into retained earnings, which then can be used for capital expenditures or growing the business or hiring people or working capital. When a business has profit, it can do good things: give it to the shareholders and grow the enterprise. And by the way, the only way it can hire people is if it grows the enterprise.
Now, corporations, they’re made up of people, and then, of course, the buildings that people work in. The buildings don’t pay taxes. The only people that—the only entities that pay taxes are people. And so, corporations are collections of people that are trying to have good jobs for themselves and promote the future. And so, corporations are made up of people, and the money goes to people, either to hire people or to pay shareholders. And so, they’re made up of people. So, somehow thinking that there’s something else out there that we could just grab money from and get taxes from, and everything could be better, that doesn’t involve people, well, they’re still people. And what I want to do is make America a place where those corporations that have that money decide to invest here.
I was with a company—with a guy who runs a big chemical company. He said, "We just announced a $20 billion factory in Saudi Arabia." I said, "Why?" He said, "We wanted to build it in Pennsylvania, but the regulators in this country are not willing to act to allow us to get hold of the natural gas, so we’re going to have to go somewhere else." Tens of thousands of jobs lost, not by the corporations, but by government not doing its job. I want this to be the place where corporations—people—from all over the world want to invest here, grow here, start their businesses.
You may not be aware of this but many people who have retirement plans are in fact part owners of corporations. If you have any money invested in a 401K there is a chance you own stock in big oil or other evil corporations. It happens. My retirement money is tied up in several stock funds and over the last 3 decades has grown to be a nice little chunk of change thanks to some rather smart people who invest those funds. I am not rich by any means but thanks to those corporations I may actually get to live out my later years without lining up at the soup kitchen....maybe. Then again looking at the national debt....maybe not.
So the republican congress we are staring at is responsble for the weak economy?
Wow! I don't believe I have to explain this. But, here we go:
Congress is made up of two houses: The House of Representatives and the Senate. The House members are supposed to be closer to their constituents and all of them are elected every two years. The Senate holds elections every two years, but each term is six years with 1/3 of the Senate up for election every two years. Of course, as you know, the President is elected every four years for a max of two terms.
Now, Republicans held the House of Representatives from 1995 until 2007. The Senate was more or less under Republican control through most of the Bush years, but during this time, Senators had a habit of switching sides to get what they wanted. This would either tilt control over the Dems or force a balanced Senate. However, in 2007, both houses of Congress, the US House of Representatives and the US Senate both fell under the control of Democrats. This continued through the final two years of Bush AND THE FIRST TWO YEARS OF OBAMA.
Then, in the most recent election held in 2010, Republicans took control of the House and Democrats maintain control of the Senate. When this happens, very little actually gets done. Bills must pass both houses of Congress before the President may sign them into law or veto them. If the president vetoes a bill, it does not become a law unless 2/3 of the Senate vote to override the veto. If the Senate the House can't agree on legislation, then nothing reaches the President's desk.
Why am I telling you this? Well, I assume you are either from another country and don't know how the US political system works, or you are simply a moron who was too stoned on Saturday mornings to understand the meaning behind School House Rock. The point being that you have have a basic grasp of the political system before you can understand what it means when I tell you...
wait for it...
Republicans only control the House of Representatives. Democrats still control the Senate and the White House.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
The whole program that Solyndra got the loan guarantee from was over $16 billion. The Solyndra default is 3.3% of that. The program had a budgeted default rate of over 12%. So far there have been 2 defaults, Solyndra and Beacon Power that amounts to a total default rate is only 3.6%. 90% of the loan guarantees went to wind and solar projects that have contracts with utilities and are unlikely to default.
It's just a made up controversy being used to make political hay.
What a failure, so many better things that we could have done with that money
Truth to be told - this is not the only failure that the American government has funded
Trillions and trillions of American Tax Dollars had been wasted in pet projects favored by politicians
Those precious tax dollars gone to cronies of those politicians
In other words, it's CORRUPTION in practice, but unfortunately, according to the American laws, it's not counted as "corruption"
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Dude, Pentagon pisses away $1.5B _a day_ these days. If you're looking to save some of "your" taxpayer dollars, this is where it needs to come from, not from forward looking investments that did not pan out because another country subsidizes their solar panels industry more.
A lot of those failures have been projects that were labelled as "Success!", because they worked out well for the people receiving the money, regardless of whether they did any good for the taxpayers. It's not just the bombs that didn't explode or the ships that sank or airplanes that couldn't fly, it's also the bombs that successfully blew up targets they shouldn't have been dropped on, battleships we didn't need, and airplanes designed to fight the Cold War.
This project really annoys me, though. My commute takes me right by the plant, usually at slow speeds waiting for the freeway exit, so I've been able to watch the construction from the beginning. At first there was no obvious work, just picketers complaining about non-union labor, then construction starting, then the building frame going up and the skin going on, and presumably work happening inside as well. And then instead of opening it's closed. I hope the potential buyers actually go through with it and do something useful with the factory.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
A Chinese firm bought up an old car plant in the UK a few years back. Rather than taking over the site they just packed up all the equipment and assembly lines and moved them to China.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Yes, this was passed by Congress during Bush and signed by Bush. Bush supporters are wrong when they roast Obama over the concept of these green energy loan guarantees under the mantle of "smaller government," because they weren't even his idea. They should look to their own party.
The idea -- wrong or right -- was to help boost this country's position in manufacturing these technologies. By law there was a process established that basically way mirrored the standard due diligence that any smart investor would do. Solyndra's application for funds started under the Bush administration using this process. But the program not being Obama's idea didn't mean he couldn't capitalize on it, making it the centerpiece of "his" green initiative.
But the problems did start with Obama. The government beancounters in charge of vetting applicants, the OMB, basically said that Solyndra was a bad deal as is. When pressed, they asked the administration for more time to do proper due diligence, refusing to sign off on the deal. But because Solyndra was a high-point of Obama's administration, he had approval rushed through over their objections. IMHO, right there some administration officials need to be going to jail.
But that's the innocent part, you could almost forgive them for being too fervent in their push for green energy. The problem is that crony capitalism and conflict of interest also permeate this deal. Billionaire Obama supporter and Solyndra investor George Kaiser helped push through the deal. An Obama official who was trying to push this through, his wife was a lawyer representing Solyndra in the deal. Solyndra execs and investors went to the White House several times before the approval.
For the icing on the cake, early last year Solyndra told the government it was about bankrupt. The OMB basically said good, let them go bankrupt, it would save taxpayer money. But the Obama admin pushed through an unprecedented refinancing and released another 60+ million in financing. Then the Obama-supporting execs took their fat bonuses and let the company go bankrupt.
We can debate subsidies and loan guarantees somewhere else, because when it comes to Solyndra, the only real issue is the corruption of this administration.
The administration was already pushing to up the guarantees to a billion dollars, but the company went bankrupt first. It was a bad deal according to the OMB. Pouring more money on it would have just meant more money for them to burn through. Sadly, Obama still says the Solyndra deal was a "good bet" when his accountants told him it was a financially unsound bet from the beginning.