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Chinese Firm Wins Bid For US-Backed Battery Maker
theodp writes "On September 13, 2010, President Obama called A123 Systems from the Oval Office to congratulate them on opening the nation's first manufacturing facility to mass-produce electric vehicle batteries, which the White House noted was made possible by a $249 million Recovery Act grant the company received the prior August. 'When folks lift up their hoods on the cars of the future,' the President said, 'I want them to see engines and batteries that are stamped: Made in America. And that's what you guys are helping to make happen.' But on Saturday, the assets of A123 Systems were auctioned off to the Wanxiang Group, a large Chinese auto parts maker. Wanxiang agreed to pay $256 million for A123's automotive and commercial operations, including its three factories in the United States. Forbes reports that A123's stock, which closed at 7 cents a share on Friday, is now worthless."
Free market my ass. This is corporatism. Allow the corporation to do what they want at all costs. There is no reason that the government should NOT be allowed to designate that funds it spends benefits its citizens over other people. EVERY OTHER country in the world does this.
Let the nitpicking and the corporate hothead flaming begin below....
This is the free market in action. Would you rather the White House block the sale?
I'd rather the White House not give them $250M in taxpayer money in the first place. How exactly was that free market in action?
I'd like to say this is speculative investment, and I'd also rather my governmenet not use tax dollars to engage in such speculative investment at all.
But it is, in fact, crony capitalism, or worse, pure fraud.
No, wait, it's just fraud. We are being robbed.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
In a free market, a failing company would fail. In this case, the government took $249 million in tax dollars and gave it away. This is not the free market.
Love sees no species.
Because that is not how they play this game.
Look at how they dumped solar cells as a great example.
and how do we keep idiots like the entire republican party
Man, you put together an interesting argument, then I see the diarrhea oozing down your leg. When you make jackass sweeping generalizations, you need to be ignored until you learn to play better with others.
Public money is best spent on things private companies can't/won't do.
The best long term thing Government can do to help the country is finance research and education that form the building blocks for new companies. By comparison there are boat loads of investment dollars floating around in the private sector, the Government has no special way of knowing who the winners will be over private investors and the dollars are less needed there anyway. Financing companies is much riskier always, I guess I can see floating a loan to an established company in a crisis, but that is about it.
Republicans and, worse yet, Democrats both have become overly hypnotized with the power of "Private Enterprise". But people who run private companies are still just people. Better for Government to refocus on what is does well and assure plentiful funding for that. So if you really want to help produce electric cars, put out money for research at Universities and have open contracts for US manufacturers to sell the Government electric cars.
Xerox Parc were famous for innovating like hell, but being completely unable to monetize that innovation. Other people took their inventions and ran with them.
The USA is doing this on a national level. America innovates -- China, buys or steals the IP, then destroys American business, and yet people whine about the lack of 'pure' free markets, as if the beggar-thy-neighbour, merchantilist Chinese are doing everything they can to destroy Western business.
Time for people, especially the free market idealists to pull their heads out of their arses, and realise that the crypto-fascist Chinese Communist Party is waging a long, generational war against the West, and are hell bent on world domination.
When competing with the Chinese, all options must be on the table. If that means we're not simon-sure free-marketers, so what? If the government puts up seed money to kick-start American national champions and the bet turns sour, so what?
Ideological purity will get us nowhere at the end of the day. Only winning matters. Time to grow some balls, and learn how to fight as dirty as the Red Chinese.
I'd like to say this is speculative investment,
No it wasn't. It was a grant , not a loan, not an investment. That means the government just gave them the money with no requirement or expectation that it would be paid back.
Yes, but I'd like to think the gov't doesn't just give away money for the hell of it.
'When folks lift up their hoods on the cars of the future,' the President said, 'I want them to see engines and batteries that are stamped: Made in America. And that's what you guys are helping to make happen.'
That sounds like an expectation to me.
We are being robbed.
How can you be robbed of something you gave away?
Because I didn't give it away. Some group of assholes did. Most of whom I did not vote for.
all the IP will go to the Chinese.
At least this time we got them to pay for it.
But who receives payment of the auction proceeds? I'm guessing it won't be the people who put up the $249 recovery funds.
This is not the free market.
First and foremost, what do you think a free market is?
Second, we haven't had *free markets for over 100 years and we don't want free markets.
Competitive markets are where the real growth is found and the only way to get competition is to restrain the worst impulses of the free market.
Third, this is what we have: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_economy
It's better than a completely free market.
*For all definitions of "free"
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
So using tax dollars to lower the price of your products to drive competitors out of business is competition?
So what is your bar for cheating?