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Apple Sapphire Glass Supplier GT Advanced Files For Bankruptcy
mrspoonsi writes GT Advanced Technologies is filing for bankruptcy. In an announcement on Monday, GT Advanced, which makes sapphire displays that many investors hoped would be in Apple's newest iPhone, said that it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In early September, shares of GT Advanced got crushed after the company's sapphire displays were not in the latest version of Apple's iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. GT Advanced, however, signed a multi-year agreement with Apple last November to supply the company with sapphire material. That agreement included a $578 million prepayment, which GT Advanced is set to repay Apple over a five-year period starting in 2015.
You forgot step 3.5) Where the "sapphire glass" turns out to not meet the specifications Apple requested and GTAT committed to providing.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Care to expand on this?
Plenty of private investors had looked at Solyndra and declined to invest. It was already apparent that Solyndra had bet on the wrong technology, and their manufacturing costs were uncompetitive. They were using questionable accounting to cover up their problems. When news got out that the government was thinking of giving them a half billion taxpayer dollars, lots of people started raising red flags. Many people, both inside and outside the company, already knew that Solyndra was a sinking ship.
Two lessons that should have been learned from the Solyndra debacle, but were not:
1. The government should stick to funding basic scientific research, and refrain from "picking winners" by investing in private businesses. It is far better to leave that to people investing THEIR OWN MONEY.
2. If the government ignores lesson #1, and wants to invest anyway, on the theory that politicians are smarter than markets, then they should pair tax dollars with private investments, and only invest a limited percentage, in businesses that have been vetted by private investors.
Why can't the government fail, just like a 'regular' investor? While I actually don't disagree - I think the role of government is in basic research, but the analogy holds. Both basic research and applied investing can fail. The former might result in an idea that didn't pan out, the latter results in an investment that didn't pan out. Investments are never guaranteed.
This doesn't mean that Solyndra wasn't screwed up for reasons that you mention, but I have no real beef about the government losing money on investments. It is something they're good at (losing money, that is). Always work to your strengths.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Yeah...you missed the non-partisan view of the logic stream. Allow me to show how things played out without the republican or democrat filters. Bush looked at Solyndra and tried to push to invest in it...but the administration ran out of time during a political time sink. Obama's administration took over and continued the efforts of the previous administration to invest. So basically you have the fact that the idea was started by one round of idiots and pushed forward (or at the very least, not stopped) by the next round of idiots and through both rounds of idiots the American people got shafted. Same story as what always happens in politics...with the supporters of idiot circle A blaming idiot circle B for the issue, and idiot circle B supporters blaming idiot circle A...perpetuating the huge ass political circle jerk of finding someone to blame for a problem instead of working on actual solutions and thus letting things continue to spiral out of anyone's control all the while blaming the other guy for not taking responsibility of the control stick and letting the flat spin continue.
Round and Round she goes, where she stops nobody knows. So goes American Roulette