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Solyndra's High-tech Plant To Be Sold

Posted by Unknown on from the no-bailout-for-you dept.

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."

13 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. FAILURE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "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.

  2. Investing is inherently risky by WOOFYGOOFY · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Investing is inherently risky by medcalf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Investing is inherently risky. When you invest other people's money, you are passing the risk to them. In this case, a successful investment would have enriched the owners, while what actually happened soaked not the owners, nor the politicians, but the taxpayers. This is why it's a bad idea to have politicians "invest" public funds: there is no risk to them, and potentially the gain of having helped out their financial and political supporters. Moral hazard is vast in such situations. If you are having a problem seeing it, imagine Mitt Romney investing public funds in Koch Brothers companies, and I'm sure it will be more clear.

      --
      -- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
    2. Re:Investing is inherently risky by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Ironically, this investment failed largely because China has only fictional environmental regulations, an endless supply of powerless disposable workers and no tariffs or duties to pay on US exports (until recently). And it looks like their strategy in this case is going to win them the lion's share of the market going forward.

      FTFY

    3. Re:Investing is inherently risky by jo_ham · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You do realize that the GP was bringing up Romney to illustrate why the entire idea is bad to an Obama supporter, right? He wasn't whipping out a red penis to measure against a blue penis like you're doing. If the best defense you've got for Obama is that the previous administration did the same thing... well that's a new low for Obama I guess.

      You've completely missed my point.

      I'm not opposed to government funding and loan guarantees at all, by either party. (I'm not an American, and both "sides" are a little too right wing for my tastes).

      My point is that the Solyndra "debacle" has been seized upon by the right wing media as a way to push their small government agenda, when, of course, it's nothing new at all for the government to be backing business ventures, as witnessed by Halliburton.

      You'll note that I didn't do any "dick waving" or criticise the administration for those contracts (I could - they were awarded no-bid under the table, but I'm not against the principle of funding support from government per se), merely that there's a double standard that goes into the discussion about it.

      I'm not "defending" Obama for this move - if anything it was lowballed. He should have given them a couple of billion to match the sort of ballpark figures given to the oil industry, so in that sense I'm criticising him for not going far enough. I'm not defending him for doing what the previous administration did because *that's what government should be doing anyway*. In other words, I think it's a good thing. Unfortunate when it doesn't work out, like this case, but that's what happens to risky investments sometimes.

    4. Re:Investing is inherently risky by adiposity · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As someone who works near the Solyndra plant (and at a firm that supplied Solyndra with products), and who knows a former employee of Solyndra, I can say there was more of an issue than the Chinese. Yes, the Chinese dumped on the market, and yes, this made it difficult for Solyndra to survive...but, there was a culture of incredible waste at Solyndra. Everything purchased had to be top dollar. As is often the case when a company has too much money, many things were bought that were unnecessary, and problems were usually fixed by throwing more money at it. My friend is an engineer and observed many times designs had to be reworked because of incompetence and lack of attention to detail. But this was accepted, because there was plenty of money. When the money ran out, it was too late to change.

      Solyndra probably couldn't have survived, anyway, but they did themselves no favors. And the huge investments made into Solyndra only encouraged them to be wasteful. Sometimes a budget results in a better product.

  3. Re:but... by sqrt(2) · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
  4. this makes me itchy by roc97007 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  5. Re:but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  6. Re:but... by amiga3D · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  7. Re:Fun fun fun by ArcherB · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
  8. Tempest in a teapot by riverat1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  9. Re:CORRUPTION !! by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Informative

    Uhhh...dude? you might want to Google "Solyndra tip of iceberg" to see that while Bush paid lip service (and gave VERY little money) to "green" projects Obama used the green projects to do his his own little payback parade. We are talking billions of dollars to several different groups with only ONE thing in common....they all gave large sums of money to Obama during his campaign in 2008.

    So I'm sorry but replacing a shitty president with an R after his name with a shitty president with a D after his name still leaves you with the shitty president part. hell Bush and Obama have been pretty damned interchangeable when it comes to shittiness, the only difference is...well not much.

    --
    ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.