Intentional.
Does it really change the fact that conservatives were wrong?
WOW. That’s an absolutely amazing bit of bullshit you posted. Lets start with the title of the article you cited: “Solyndra loan program vilified by Republicans turns a profit”.
One would take away from it that Solyndra was profitable. It was not. It shut down soon after the loan was made. It was valued poorly as an investment yet the loan was made anyway. But by some miracle and 1.8 million dollars of political contributions the loan went through. That was the scandal. It was NOT the loaning of money to green projects, It was THAT particular project. The money could have gone into battery research or an infinite number of projects with realistic chances of success instead of a giving it to political cronies.
That loan failure alone would have paid ALL of the insurance needs for 100,000 people. It was not the only one that failed. Instead of thinking of politics like a football game and cheering for your favorite team maybe it would be better if WE THE PEOPLE were the team to cheer for.
Any fool can spend public money foolishly. But it takes a special kind of stupid to thank the fools and ask for more of the same.
Except they haven’t yet been proven wrong.
“The $5 billion to $6 billion figure was calculated based on the average rates and expected returns of funds dispersed so far, paid back over 20 to 25 years. Applicants view the Energy Department as a lender of last resort, according to Peter Davidson, the program’s director.”
The link is based on estimates. It also assumes that these “successful” companies do not come back for more government help in any future economic downturn. The link is also not taking into account other subsidies to green energy. A bit of accounting trickery can turn this specific programme into a moneymaker for the State. Include all other subsidies these companies or industries recieve and the profit for the state will be wiped out.
The article cited Tesla as having paid back its government loan. The article omits to mention one major reason that Tesla is such a “success” is due to tax breaks and subsidies it recieves in other forms of state assistance. It’s paying back government money with government money.
So, your point is that being factually incorrect is OK as long as it helps prove that Republicans were wrong?
Still, you need to specify which Republicans were wrong about what, and how your article proves that they were, in fact, wrong. Hint: A projection of what might happen 25 years in the future is not proof.
Apparently they didn’t apply any sort of discount rate at all–they just assume that a dollar twenty years from now is worth the same as a dollar today. And they haven’t actually realized any profit yet–they’re just predicting that it will turn a profit, which is what they were predicting before the loan was made, so nothing has really changed.
And of course, the level of expected return is way out of like with the huge level of volatility that they took on. Even a 10% return on an extremely risky asset is not a good investment, for example.
Oh, and half the loans went to Ford and nuclear energy. Not exactly the bastions of the environmental movement. Not to mention that some of the loans have been or may be paid back with taxpayer subsidies, so it’s still a net loss to the government.
Even if we accept that this is true, you are suggesting that government makes better investments than investors who have been coddled by the Greenspan Put. Not surprising.
Federal Reserve policies have kept should-be Wall Street Losers in control of capital.
Oooh, I love that one! Will you do “Fast and Furious” next, and then maybe “Freebird”?
Is this really the argument you’re making? It’s quite poor. Let me try:
The moon landing was fake. Evolution and Gravity are just theories. The Earth is flat. Magneto shot JFK. Therefore, conservatives were wrong about something sometime. We estimate.
That’s a winning argument, right?
Had you used a poster’s name in a complimentary manner to indicate an action intended to improve discussion by insisting on accurate use of language, it still would have not been in very good taste, particularly as that poster has not eve participated in this thread.
As you used it as an insult to mean something else, it was wholly inappropriate.
Do not do this again.
[ /Moderating ]
Government support of all those startups wasn’t done in the hope of short-term profit, nor should it have been, right? Betting money on winners and losers in that time frame, for that sole purpose, is the function of private capital.
No, it should be obvious that the goal is to help technologies and industries that we need to have and to be strong in the longer-term future survive despite the too-short, too-narrowly-focused filters that private capital requires for investment. The Solyndra problem was not with the company or the technology, but the inability of a private firm to compete with massive dumping by China’s government. So what would the Obama-haters have him do about that?
Ensuring tax breaks for R&D would seem a decent place to start. Healthy R&D at least keeps US companies in the game at a fraction of the cost. Even directly subsidizing R&D would be preferable. Giving subsidies to the dubious manufacturing of technology is playing with fire, especially if such manufacturing comes up against equally dubious subsidies in China.
I agree, this support was not meant to garner short term profits. Even long term profits were not the main goal. Let’s go even further, breaking even long term(or a slight loss) would be a pretty decent return. A decent return if it results in the long term success of a significant number of companies who recieved aid. However, we are nowhere near that stage. Even the successful companies cited are subsidised to a ludicrous degree by other government money. Only when significant number of companies can walk unaided can this programme be deemed anything like a success. Personally, I won’t hold my breath for proven success anytime soon.
Of course the government CAN pick winners and losers.
In the case of Solyndra, the government sought to capitalize a solar energy company with a failing business model. They picked a loser.
When a company has a sound business model, investment will come from the private market. When bureaucrats think they know better, it typically does not end well.
This is basic common sense. If the money being given is strictly to advance research into solar technology, then there are much better avenues then privately-owned corporate entities that claim to seek a profit. I’d imagine there are universities all across the country who would have done much better with that $780 million. Even if their research leads to dead ends, the losses are minimal compared to the bankruptcy of a Solyndra.
There you go, tomndebbing again.
Let’s me reformulate this. I have two proposal :
-we, the people, in spending our own money, have no problem doing so, or :
-the government, in spending its own money, has no problem doing so.
Your government isn’t some mysterious and nefarious external entity. It’s the people you have picked to manage the common purse, and to make decisions and in particular to decide what risks to take with the money.
We’re talking about the federal government spending money from the general fund, which means income taxes. In that case, even if it’s the voters, it’s still mostly people spending money that comes from other people not from themselves.
Then why was Tesla forced to get government loans? Where was private investment? Their business model seems to have worked out OK.
There’s not a “tremendous amount of private money” in Cleantech. Private investors were hugely burned by big investments they made in the mid 2000s which spectacularly failed to pan out and started to rapidly pull out of the market in the early 2010s as they realized cleantech had a time horizon longer than the 10 years VCs typically allocate.
In 2012, private investment actually dropped from $9.6B to $6.5B. In the meantime, government investments in cleantech peaked at $44B in 2009, dropping to $31B in 2012, dwarfing the role of private money.
VCs are slowly climbing back into Cleantech but it’s still far harder to find money than during the mini-boom around 2006 - 2008.
OK, this irritates me. Both you and JT upthread seemed to believe I was in some way focused on Solyndra. I was not. Instead I was focusing on process and systems.
By focusing on Solyndra - as both the OP and commentators have done and as you seem to do here - is to deny the very existence of the real issue: the process, the system by which government can allocate dollars to support new business should that be determined to be a good thing.
Again, government picks winners and losers all the time even going back to competing groups applying for statehood back in the 1800s. You think it didn’t pick a winner when West Virginia had its whirlwind romance with admission to the union? What about in the immigration process? Hell, there used to be quotas from each nation for immigration. That’s picking winners and losers as explicitly as it could possibly be.
So stop looking at the specific as if you were picking fights. Instead focus on the concepts behind governments and don’t let media waste your time.
In that case, you should hot have said this:
Even so, I don’t see how my post (which never mentions Solyndra) is not about the process. It was.
Time to preach, let me roll out my Port-a-Pulpit…
Clean, green energy may be possible, may not be. We don’t know, but we damned sure ought to! We swim in a sea of energy, we can’t tap it? We can’t utilize it? Fucking algae can, we can’t? We may be one Einstein, one Tesla away from the breakthrough for clean, green and abundant energy. How stupid would we have to be not to go for it? Dumber than algae.
Maybe it isn’t possible. But commercially manufactured solar power is happening now. How long ago was it when that was considered impossible? Having started, what is going to stop us?
And I want it to be us. The Americans, who put the footprints on the moon. As a red-blooded, flag-waving, all American radical lefty I say: if not us, who? If not now, when? We either do it, and lead the world, or they do it, and we follow. And sell it to us, who ought to be selling it to them!
Compared to the prospect of clean green energy, fifty Solyndras going totally belly-up is piddling, chump change, no more than a couple of sheets from a roll of Dollar Store toilet paper!
Here endeth the lesson. For now…