Jurassic Media Takes Up Solyndra Looting/Loan Guarantees

Radio Refugee · Sep 3, 2011

That this was a looting of the public fisc was never going to be a question. Big leftwad campaign donors get favors. Everyone knows that. Half a billion dollars seems like a lot but....that's the Chicago Way.

No, the headline here is that ABC has taken up the story AT ALL. THAT is the news. This is the beginning of the end for the criminal regime in the WH. Will they get curious about Holder and gun running? We'll see. That's ten times the crime of Solyndra.

Investigators Probe White House Role in Massive Energy Loan

By MATTHEW MOSK and RONNIE GREENE
ABC NEWS and iWATCH NEWS
Sept. 2, 2011

House investigators said they have uncovered evidence that White House officials became personally involved in an Energy Department review of a hot-button $535 million loan guarantee to the now-failed California solar company Solyndra.

The allegation surfaced in a letter House Energy Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) sent to the White House Thursday night, saying he planned to accelerate efforts to understand an investment deal that may have left taxpayers out half a billion dollars.

"We have learned from our investigation that White House officials monitored Solyndra's application and communicated with [Department of Energy] and Office of Management and Budget officials during the course of their review," the letter says.

Thursday's letter, which calls on the White House to turn over correspondence between administration officials, Solyndra and its investors, presents the most pointed suggestion that the White House had direct involvement in the financing.

"How did this company, without maybe the best economic plan, all of a sudden get to the head of the line?" Upton told ABC News in an interview this week. "We want to know who made this decision ... and we're not going to stop until we get those answers."

READ: Solyndra Collapse a 'Waste' of Half a Billion By Obama, GOP Critics Say

White House officials have said in interviews that they did not intervene in the Solyndra deal or others benefiting companies backed by supporters of the president. Yet the administration, from Obama to the Department of Energy, has very publicly praised the loan guarantee.

In 2009, the Obama administration hailed the Solyndra loan as the first in a series of federal infusions for "green energy" firms that held the potential to clean up the environment and create jobs. But earlier this week, Solyndra abruptly closed its doors, announced it would file for bankruptcy and laid off more than 1,100 workers.

While Energy Department officials steadfastly vouched for Solyndra -- even after an earlier round of layoffs raised eyebrows -- other federal agencies and industry analysts for months questioned the viability of the company. Peter Lynch, a longtime solar industry analyst, told ABC News the company's fate should have been obvious from the start.

"Here's the bottom line," Lynch said. "It costs them $6 to make a unit. They're selling it for $3. In order to be competitive today, they have to sell it for between $1.5 and $2. That is not a viable business plan."

Other flags have been raised about how the Energy Department pushed the deal forward. The Center for Public Integrity's iWatch News and ABC disclosed that Energy Department officials announced the support for Solyndra even before final marketing and legal reviews were in. To government auditors, that move raised questions about just how fully the department vetted the deal -- and assessed its risk to taxpayers -- before signing off.

READ: Did Obama Administration Cut Corners for a Green Energy Company?

The White House's Office of Budget and Management viewed the arrangement as a riskier bet to taxpayers than DOE had. That forced the government to set aside millions more in case of a default, iWatch reported last month.

Republicans in Congress have raised questions for months about the Energy Department's decision to make Solyndra the poster-child for the green energy loan program. They expressed concern that so much federal money was headed to a company whose key investor was George Kaiser, an Oklahoma billionaire who raised more than $50,000 for Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. Since May, Kaiser has declined interview requests.

The Obama administration has said the loan to Solyndra came only after a thorough review by Energy Department analysts, and that no one from the White House exerted pressure to influence the decision to back the loan in 2009, or to restructure the financing this year after it became clear Solyndra was not thriving financially.

Asked about the wisdom of throwing its support behind Solyndra, Press Secretary Jay Carney said there is always risk in such a financing. But in the case of Solyndra and other green energy firms, he said, the risk is worth it.

"I think there were Republicans who thought investments in clean energy were a mistake, that they were ready to cede that vital industry to foreign competition," Carney said during Thursday's White House press briefing. "They were ready to cede the automobile industry to foreign competition, a million jobs there. I -- we just disagree on that front."

The Oklahoma-based George Kaiser Family Foundation, a prime investor in Solyndra, said in a statement cited by the Tulsa World newspaper that the company had been unable to overcome "serious challenges in the marketplace, especially the drastic decline in solar panel prices during the past two years caused in part by subsidies provided by the government of China to Chinese solar panel manufacturers."
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Stevie Wonder could see this company had no viable business plan. But it was GREEN and it was an Obama campaign bundler. They were also treated to significantly lower interest rates on the half billion they didn't pay back, like 1.5% VS 4% for the common folk.

This will prove to be a fetid pile in the Oval.

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waltky · Sep 8, 2011

Feds searchin' Solyndra...

FBI searches bankrupt Obama-visited solar company
Sep 08, 2011 - More embarrassment for the bankrupt solar energy company that had received $535 million in loan guarantees from the Obama admimistration.

'The FBI served search warrants today on the Fremont, Cal., company that closed its doors last week.

From The San Francisco Chronicle:

The search is part of a joint investigation involving the FBI and the Department of Energy's Office of Inspector General, said FBI spokeswoman Julianne Sohn, who declined to elaborate.

Solyndra closed its doors on Aug. 31. It did so without warning and without WARN, a state and federal law requiring advance notice of a large layoff or shutdown. The company has said it was most likely exempt from notifying its 900 full-time and 200 contract workers ahead of time under a loophole in the law, officially known as the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Act.

A spokesman for Solyndra did not immediately respond to a request for comment this morning. The solar-cell maker said last week that it was filing for bankruptcy, an abrupt end for a company that was considered an innovative leader in a fast-changing industry.

Both President Obama and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger toured the plant after it opened in 2009, citing it as a symbol of the nation's economic recovery and commitment to a green economy.

Source
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Radio Refugee · Sep 13, 2011

ABC stays on point in pursuit of what could be a mammoth trophy.

By MATTHEW MOSK, BRIAN ROSS (@brianross) , and RONNIE GREENE
ABC NEWS and iWATCH NEWS
Sept. 13, 2011

Newly uncovered emails show the White House closely monitored the Energy Department's deliberations over a $535 million government loan to Solyndra, the politically-connected solar energy firm that recently went bankrupt and is now the subject of a criminal investigation.

The company's solar panel factory was heralded as a centerpiece of the president's green energy plan -- billed as a way to jump start a promising new industry. And internal emails uncovered by investigators for the House Energy and Commerce Committee that were shared exclusively with ABC News show the Obama administration was keenly monitoring the progress of the loan, even as analysts were voicing serious concerns about the risk involved. "This deal is NOT ready for prime time," one White House budget analyst wrote in a March 10, 2009 email, nine days before the administration formally announced the loan.

"If you guys think this is a bad idea, I need to unwind the W[est] W[ing] QUICKLY," wrote Ronald A. Klain, who was chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden, in another email sent March 7, 2009. The "West Wing" is the portion of the White House complex that holds the offices of the president and his top staffers. Klain declined comment to ABC News.

Beginning in March, ABC News, in partnership with the Center for Public Integrity's iWatch News, was first to report on simmering questions about the role political influence may have played in Solyndra's selection as the Obama administration's first loan guarantee recipient. Federal auditors had flagged the loan, saying some applicants had benefitted from special treatment.

The emails were uncovered by investigators for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which will hold hearings on the Solyndra loan Wednesday. The Republican-led House has been investigating the Obama administration's green energy loan program for months. That probe took on new urgency two weeks ago, when Solyndra abruptly shut its doors and laid off 1,100 employees. Last week, the FBI raided the factory as part of a joint investigation with the Energy Department's inspector general.

"This is not right. This is not good," said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., who chairs the House committee that is examining the loan. "It makes you sick to your stomach. This is taxpayer money."

As federal authorities examine whether Solyndra misled the government about its true financial state, the Obama White House is fielding fresh questions over why it pushed so hard for Solyndra. Officials with DOE and the Office of Management and Budget are expected to testify Wednesday. Executives with Solyndra, invited to appear as witnesses, will not attend Wednesday's hearing but have told the House committee they will voluntarily appear next week.

Obama's DOE has said it backed Solyndra as a potential game changer in the clean tech movement, but the company's collapse came after clear warning signs the venture was a high risk from the start.

The White House has argued that any effort to finance start-up businesses in a relatively new field like solar energy is bound to include risky ventures that could fail. They reject the notion being pushed by Republicans that Solyndra was chosen for political reasons. One of the largest private investors in the deal, Oklahoma billionaire George Kaiser, was also a prominent fundraiser for Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.

White House Says Emails Do Show Interest in Solyndra

White House officials said the emails shared with ABC News Tuesday do show White House interest in the timing of the Solyndra decision -- only because the president was considering announcing the decision himself while on a trip to California.

"I think that it is clear that folks understood at DOE that they were supposed to make their decision on the merits and do whatever they were supposed to do to kick the tires on the decision," an administration official told ABC News. "Folks were interested in being updated as to whether the decision-making process was completed."

The White House also noted to ABC News that the Bush administration was the first to consider Solyndra's application and that some executives at the company have a history of donating to Republicans. The results of the Congressional probe shared Tuesday with ABC News show that less than two weeks before President Bush left office, on January 9, 2009, the Energy Department's credit committee had voted against offering a loan commitment to Solyndra.

Even after Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009, analysts in the Energy Department and in the Office of Management and Budget were repeatedly questioning the wisdom of the loan. In one exchange, an Energy official wrote of "a major outstanding issue" -- namely, that Solyndra's numbers showed it would run out of cash in September 2011.

There was also concern about the high-risk nature of the project. Internally, the Office of Management and Budget wrote that "the risk rating for the project sponsor [Solyndra] seems high." Outside analysts had warned for months that the company might not be a sound investment.

Peter Lynch, a New York-based solar energy analyst, told ABC News it took only a cursory glance through Solyndra's prospectus to see there was a problem with their numbers.

"It's very difficult to perceive a company with a model that says, well, I can build something for six dollars and sell it for three dollars," Lynch said. "Those numbers don't generally work. You don't want to lose three dollars for every unit you make."

In 2008, Solyndra, then just three years old, pushed ahead with its application for government backing to build a new plant to produce its unique solar panels. An outside rating agency, Fitch, gave Solyndra a B+ credit rating that August. Two months earlier, in June 2008, Dun & Bradstreet issued a credit appraisal of the company. Its assessment: "Fair."

Those are not top-of-the-line scores, Fitch Ratings spokeswoman Cindy Stoller told the Center for Public Integrity's iWatch News, which has been investigating the deal in partnership with ABC News since March. She could not discuss the Solyndra review specifically, but said of a B+ rating: "It's a non-investment grade rating." She provided a company ratings definition, showing that B+ falls between a "highly speculative" B and "speculative" BB.

Asked about those ratings, and how significantly the department viewed the risk, energy officials said Monday the department conducted "extensive due diligence" on the application, which included consideration of the Fitch rating.

"We believed the rating, which is used to inform our analysis of potential risks associated with the loan, was appropriate for the size, scale and innovative nature of the project and was consistent with the ratings of other innovative start-up companies," said Damien LaVera, an Energy Department spokesman.

"The Department conducted exhaustive reviews of Solyndra's technology and business model prior to approving their loan guarantee application," LaVera said. "Sophisticated, professional private investors, who put more than $1 billion of their own money behind Solyndra, came to the same conclusion as the Department: that Solyndra was an extremely promising company with innovative technology and a very good investment."
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Total scam, start to finish. Obama should hang for this.

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HB Surfer · Sep 13, 2011

Maybe they will even cover "Fast and Furious" next?

naaaaahhhh.... who am I kidding.

Professor Peabody · Sep 13, 2011

One of Solyandra's biggest investors is an Obama campaign bundler.

Radio Refugee · Sep 14, 2011

The circle expands.

The original bad boys of busting Presidents have joined the chase. No, not Woodstein, but it is the WaPo.

Solyndra loan: White House pressed on review of solar company now under investigation

By Joe Stephens and Carol D. Leonnig, Published: September 13

EXCLUSIVE | The Obama White House tried to rush federal reviewers for a decision on a nearly half-billion-dollar loan to the solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra so Vice President Biden could announce the approval at a September 2009 groundbreaking for the company’s factory, newly obtained e-mails show.

The Silicon Valley company, a centerpiece in President Obama’s initiative to develop clean energy technologies, had been tentatively approved for the loan by the Energy Department but was awaiting a final financial review by the Office of Management and Budget.

The August 2009 e-mails, released exclusively to The Washington Post, show White House officials repeatedly asking OMB reviewers when they would be able to decide on the federal loan and noting a looming press event at which they planned to announce the deal. In response, OMB officials expressed concern that they were being rushed to approve the company’s project without adequate time to assess the risk to taxpayers, according to information provided by Republican congressional investigators.

Solyndra collapsed two weeks ago, leaving taxpayers liable for the $535 million loan.

One e-mail from an OMB official referred to “the time pressure we are under to sign-off on Solyndra.” Another complained, “There isn’t time to negotiate.”

“We have ended up with a situation of having to do rushed approvals on a couple of occasions (and we are worried about Solyndra at the end of the week),” one official wrote. That Aug. 31, 2009, message, written by a senior OMB staffer and sent to Terrell P. McSweeny, Biden’s domestic policy adviser, concluded, “We would prefer to have sufficient time to do our due diligence reviews.”

White House officials said Tuesday that no one in the administration tried to influence the OMB decision on the loan. They stressed that the e-mails show only that the administration had a “quite active interest” in the timing of OMB’s decision.

“There was interest in when a decision would be made because of its impact on whether an event involving the vice president could be scheduled for a particular date or not, but the loan guarantee decision was merit-based and made by career staffers at DOE,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said.

Solyndra spokesman David Miller said he was unaware of any direct involvement of the White House in securing or accelerating the loan.

The e-mail exchanges could intensify questions about whether the administration was playing favorites and made costly errors while choosing the first recipient of a loan guarantee under its stimulus program. Solyndra’s biggest investors were funds operated on behalf of the family foundation of Tulsa billionaire and Obama fundraiser George Kaiser. Although he has been a frequent White House visitor, Kaiser has said he did not use political influence to win approval of the loan.

The White House has previously said that it had no involvement in the Solyndra loan application and that all decisions were made by career officials based on the merits of the company.

It is not clear from the e-mails whether the White House
influenced a final decision to approve the loan guarantee.

The Sept. 4, 2009, groundbreaking event went ahead as scheduled, with Energy Secretary Steven Chu in attendance and Biden speaking to the gathering by satellite feed.

Republican investigators for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is holding a hearing about Solyndra on Wednesday, concluded that the White House set a closing date for the OMB approval even before the OMB review had begun.

The White House pressure may have had a “tangible impact” on the OMB’s risk assessment of the loan, the congressional investigators concluded.

In one e-mail, an OMB staff member questioned whether the review team was using the best model for determining the financial risk to taxpayers in evaluating the Solyndra deal.

“Given the time pressure we are under to sign-off on Solyndra, we don’t have time to change the model,” the staffer wrote.

Solyndra was a favorite of the administration until two weeks ago, when the company abruptly shuttered its factory and filed for bankruptcy court protection, leaving 1,100 people out of work and taxpayers on the hook for the loans. Last week, FBI agents searched the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters in a raid that Miller said appeared linked to the loan guarantee.

In one e-mail, an assistant to Rahm Emanuel, then White House chief of staff, wrote on Aug. 31, 2009, to OMB about the upcoming Biden announcement on Solyndra and asked whether “there is anything we can help speed along on OMB side.”

An OMB staff member responded: “I would prefer that this announcement be postponed. . . . This is the first loan guarantee and we should have full review with all hands on deck to make sure we get it right.”

In another message, a White House staff member wrote that officials were “walking a fine line with Solyndra needing to begin notifying investors to fly in” for the groundbreaking. It stressed that “this OMB piece” of the review was not final and pointed out that if word of the groundbreaking leaked to the public prematurely, that would “leave us in an awkward place.”

The e-mails also raise questions about whether the administration should have foreseen financial trouble. In August 2009, e-mail exchanges between Energy Department staff members pointed out that a credit-rating agency predicted that the project would run out of cash in September 2011. Solyndra shut its doors on the final day of August.

The House committee has been investigating Solyndra’s dealings with the Energy Department for six months. In July , subcommittee members subpoenaed White House documents related to the guarantee.

Questions about the selection process were first raised in a July 2010 audit by the Government Accountability Office. It concluded that the Energy Department “lacked appropriate tools for assessing the progress” of the loan program and that the department treated applicants inconsistently, “favoring some applicants and disadvantaging others.”

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), chairman of that panel’s oversight and investigations subcommittee, said last week that the FBI raid confirmed their belief that the “darling” of Obama’s green-jobs program was a “bad bet” from the beginning.

“Solyndra was the hallmark of the President’s green jobs program and widely promoted by the administration as a stimulus success story, right up until its bankruptcy and FBI raid,” Upton and Stearns said in a statement on Tuesday. “Let’s learn the lessons of Solyndra before another dollar goes out the door.”

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.) and Rep. Diana DeGette (Colo.) — Democrats on the committee who had once defended the choice of Solyndra — last week also questioned whether they had been misled. In a letter, they wrote that Solyndra chief executive Brian Harrison “did not convey to us the perilous condition of the company, and the Committee should know why. ”
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Pretty worrisome for the Chitown hustlers in the WH. Well done WaPo.

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Radio Refugee · Sep 14, 2011

The left kiddie press joins in. USAtoday makes a cursory effort to detail the dirty deal. Better than nothing.

In March 2010, the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers issued a standard but stern warning about Solyndra, a California solar panel manufacturer: The company wasn't making money and never had, which raised "substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern." Yet when President Obama visited Solyndra's plant in Fremont two months later, he gave a rousing pep talk and declared that "the future is here."

Alas, it wasn't.
Solyndra continued to struggle, canceled a planned public stock offering and filed for bankruptcy this month — leaving the U.S. government as its biggest creditor and raising new questions about whether Uncle Sam should be playing venture capitalist.
Despite initial misgivings about the company's viability, an Energy Department program aimed at boosting "clean energy" projects had guaranteed a $535 million loan to Solyndra, which produced an innovative but expensive solar panel. Taxpayers are now on the hook for some or most of that money, depending on whether someone buys the assets.
Whether Solyndra is just an expensive embarrassment, or a full-fledged scandal, remains to be seen. Shortly after the bankruptcy filing, the FBI raided Solyndra's headquarters and the homes of its executives in connection with the loan. And today, a House oversight panel holds a hearing to probe how the company — whose board and investors included some major campaign donors to Democrats and Obama — got the money, and whether the administration properly vetted the application.
Even if Solyndra's collapse is nothing more than good intentions gone awry — a big if — it is a cautionary tale about why government should be extremely wary about betting tax dollars on specific companies. If there's one thing the marketplace virtually always does better than government, it's picking individual successes in an uncertain and highly competitive business. In fact, government involvement can unfairly tilt the playing field toward one company and away from competitors.

What the government can do is create an environment that makes it possible for the best companies to emerge and thrive. Government can fund basic research that is too expensive and too uncertain for struggling companies. It alone can set clear rules, provide a productive tax environment and fiercely defend American companies from unfair foreign competition. One reason for Solyndra's demise was a huge drop in solar panel prices that might have been caused by China's heavily subsidized solar panel manufacturers dumping below-cost panels on the world market.
You can bet you'll hear a lot more about Solyndra as the campaign season intensifies, and rightly so. This is a stain on Obama's stimulus program. At the same time, context is important. The Obama administration inherited the Solyndra application from the Bush Energy Department, and Solyndra is one of 42 projects in the Energy Department's $30 billion portfolio of clean energy loan guarantees. The department says none of those other projects is in trouble; we'll see.
Moving the nation away from its reliance on oil and coal would unquestionably have huge benefits for the environment and for national security. The most efficient way to attain that goal — raising the price of fossil fuels to reflect their real cost via a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade plan — isn't going anywhere in the current political environment. That leaves a variety of next-best options worth pursuing, but trying to pick winners among individual start-up companies ought to be at the bottom of the list.
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Snowball is still tiny but this could be Everest that it's rolling down. If there's real dirt here Obama's done.

This is easier to report and easier for the moron cohort of America to understand than Fast & Furious.

I'll settle.

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conBgone · Sep 14, 2011

Radio Refugee said: ↑

That this was a looting of the public fisc was never going to be a question.
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Then cons will love Rick 'I'm deep in corrupt pokets' Perry.

Radio Refugee · Sep 15, 2011

conBgone said: ↑

Then cons will love Rick 'I'm deep in corrupt pokets' Perry.
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Have you ever, will you ever made a post on point?

I'll never find out now with the CrapBgone Ignore-o-matic.

Radio Refugee · Sep 15, 2011

This is a week old but it's the best detailing of the financial situation as Solyndra went BK. They were gifted with a tiny interest rate on their loan.

There is so far no detail of this that suggests to me 'equal treatment'. Every single little thing needs some administration caveat, explanation, dodge, lie, fraud. Too many. Way too many.

The $535 million loan to Solyndra Inc., issued by the U.S. Department of Treasury's Federal Financing Bank, included a quarterly interest rate of 1.025 percent, the government bank reported in July. Of 18 Energy Department loans cited in the bank's report, Solyndra's rate was lowest. Eight other Energy Department projects, each also backed by the Federal Financing Bank, came with rates three or four times higher, the report shows.
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Solyndra's most prolific financial backer is George Kaiser, an Oklahoma oil billionaire who was a bundler of campaign donations for Obama's 2008 race. Kaiser's Argonaut Ventures and its affiliates have been the single largest shareholder of Solyndra, according to SEC filings and other records. The company holds 39 percent of Solyndra's parent company, bankruptcy records filed Tuesday show.

Under terms of the bankruptcy filing, investors including Argonaut -- which led a $75 million round of financing for Solyndra earlier this year -- will stand in line before the federal government and other creditors.

When Solyndra announced that round of fundraising this February, it noted that the DOE had refinanced terms of the $535 million loan to extend the payment period. Under an "inter-creditor agreement" cited in the bankruptcy filing, the investors in the $75 million financing are considered first lien holders. That leaves Obama officials to confront the prospect of waiting behind private companies.

Energy officials confirmed this arrangement, saying that private investors including Kaiser would first recoup their $75 million, then the U.S. government would have a chance to recover $150 million of its investment. If any money is left, the private investors and the U.S. government would divvy up the remainder in equal shares.
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This is not as crooked as I originally feared although it's possible Big Fed gave up it's position as first lienholder over ALL private investors. That would be criminal. Time will tell how the renegotiation went down.

Questions have long persisted about why Obama chose Solyndra to be the first green energy company to benefit from the federal loans program. In May, iWatch and ABC reported that the Energy Department announced its commitment to back Solyndra without first receiving full marketing and legal reviews. That shortcut drew criticism from government auditors, who accused DOE of favoring some applicants, like Solyndra, over others.

And Obama's Office of Budget and Management viewed the deal as riskier to taxpayers than DOE had, iWatch found.
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Mac-7 · Sep 15, 2011

conBgone said: ↑

Then cons will love Rick 'I'm deep in corrupt pokets' Perry.
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Corruption?

Are you admitting that Obama was bought and paid for by the exec's at Solyndra?

Not even I would go quite that far.

Obama may not be the only idiot in Washington or even the biggest idiot.

But as long as he is president he's the one who can do the most damage to the country.

darckriver · Sep 15, 2011

Teleprompter will probably announce a bailout program soon.

Mac-7 · Sep 15, 2011

darckriver said: ↑

Teleprompter will probably announce a bailout program soon.
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Speaking of teleprompter's, someone posted this earlier in the week:

sec · Sep 15, 2011

Mac-7 said: ↑

Speaking of teleprompter's, someone posted this earlier in the week:

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I need to spread around reps but that's a great comic and a sad commentary about the incompetent one

Radio Refugee · Sep 15, 2011

This is priceless. From Solyndra's own website:

SOLYNDRA OFFERED $535 MILLION LOAN GUARANTEE BY THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

Fremont, CA, March 20, 2009 Solyndra, Inc. announced today that it is the first company to receive an offer for a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantee under Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Solyndra, a Fremont, California-based manufacturer of innovative cylindrical photovoltaic systems, will use the proceeds of a $535 million loan from the U.S. Treasurys Federal Financing Bank to expand its solar panel manufacturing capacity in California.

The leadership and actions of President Barack Obama, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and the U.S. Congress were instrumental in concluding this offer for a loan guarantee, said Solyndra CEO and founder, Dr. Chris Gronet. The DOE Loan Guarantee Program funding will enable Solyndra to achieve the economies of scale needed to deliver solar electricity at prices that are competitive with utility rates. This expansion is really about creating new jobs while meaningfully impacting global warming.
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Mac-7 · Sep 15, 2011

sec said: ↑

I need to spread around reps but that's a great comic and a sad commentary about the incompetent one
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I wasn't the first one to post it here but I'm sure the originator would be happy to have it spread around more.

It cracks me up every time I see it.

lol

Radio Refugee · Sep 16, 2011

This story has exploded. It will not stay bottled up and the Jurassic media is forced to cover it. It's really a simple story, fit for the general American Idol public. Unlike the F&F gun story, any fool can follow this.

NYT:

Solyndra Spent Liberally to Woo Lawmakers Until the End, Records Show
By JOHN MCARDLE of Greenwire
Published: September 16, 2011

The 1,100 full- and part-time employees who were abruptly laid off two weeks ago aren't the only ones whose paychecks have been affected by the sudden and dramatic failure of bankrupt solar energy company, Solyndra Inc.

Because for its brief lifespan, Solyndra proved to be pretty good for the lobbying community.

According to records filed with the Clerk of the House and a search of disclosure forms compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, Solyndra spent nearly $1.9 million on lobbying activities over a period of 43 months from 2008 to 2011.

About $1 million of that was earned by the company's two in-house lobbyists, Joseph Pasetti and Victoria Sanville, over an 18-month period from 2010 until this year. But Solyndra has also had several big-name lobbying shops on its payroll, including established powerhouses Dutko Worldwide and Holland and Knight, which began representing the then-fledgling company in 2008.

While Holland and Knight helped the company with renewable energy tax credit issues, Dutko was brought aboard, according to its filings, to "identify decisionmakers and to assist with the client's loan application" through the Department of Energy.

It is that DOE loan that has touched off an outcry on Capitol Hill and has singed the Obama administration, just as President Obama campaigns across the country for his new jobs plan and Republicans look to scale back clean energy and environmental programs.

By 2009, Solyndra was finished with Dutko and Holland and Knight and was working with well-known energy lobbyist, McBee Strategic Consulting, whose clients have included the Applied Materials Inc., a semiconductor and solar panel equipment manufacturer; Babcock & Wilcox; BrightSource Energy Inc., a solar developer; Google Inc.; Better Place Inc., an electric-vehicle charge station developer; Honeywell International; and Tesla Motors Inc., a developer of electric cars.

McBee was brought on to monitor how the new American Reinvestment and Recovery Act would affect the solar industry. The group specifically reported on lobbying forms that its issues included the DOE loan guarantee program, through which Solyndra eventually received $527 million in funding before it went bankrupt.

Behind Solyndra's own lobbyists, McBee was the shop that made the most off the company, taking in $360,000 over a two-year period.

By 2010 Solyndra had hit its lobbying peak. Not only had the company begun paying its own in-house lobbyists but it was also working with nine other lobbyists at three different agencies including McBee and two others, the Washington Tax Group, which had been brought on board to handle the company's interest as it related to the Solar Manufacturing Jobs Creation Act that was up for consideration, and McAllister and Quinn, which was handling the company's interests on the National Defense Authorization Act.

McBee stayed on board through the first quarter of this year but filed no lobbying report for the company beyond then.

One lobbying shop that was added to Solyndra's stable this year was the Democratic-leaning Glover Park Group. Glover Park had had a communications relationship with Solyndra for about a year before filing with the Clerk of the House on July 18 to conduct lobbying.

The stated purpose on that filing was to provide an "introduction of the company to [House] Energy and Commerce Committee Members."

Glover Park only worked with the company a month but it was efficient.

Three days after it filed with the clerk's office it hosted a media event in Washington at which Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison sought to convince reporters that his company was fiscally sound. At that meeting, Harrison told reporters that he was in town to brief several members of Congress about the health of his company.

But in light of the company's subsequent downfall, those meetings have left a bad taste in some members' mouths.

At an Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee hearing this week, members said they felt misled by the meetings they participated in with Harrison.

"This July, Solyndra's CEO visited my office as well as other members and talked about the strong demand for the company's products and how 2011 revenues were projected to double from 2010. Now as we all know, less than two months later, the company announced it would file for bankruptcy," committee ranking member Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) said in her opening statement at the hearing. "I'm perplexed how they could be in my office in July, telling me things were looking better and filing for bankruptcy two months later."

Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) questioned Jonathan Silver, the head of DOE's loan program, and Jeff Zients, the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, on Wednesday on whether they ignored warning signs from their staff about the company as recently as July.

"Apparently ... Solyndra was here on Capitol Hill speaking to members of Congress indicating everything was on track at the same time that your observer was telling us -- was telling you all that there was a problem," Griffith said. "I'm not saying that you all knew they were up here telling fibs, but I am concerned that they were up here telling fibs."
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Radio Refugee · Sep 16, 2011

Second hand WSJ story (paywall prevents my access. Anyone?):

Solyndra Investor admits: we wanted the loan so we could 'go public and cash out'
Ed Lasky

A clearer picture of the underlying insider scheme at Solyndra is beginning to emerge.

Yuliya Chernova of the Wall Street Journal writes a superb column today regarding all the business problems that beset the scandal plagued Solyndra. There were a litany of engineering and business problems that were very apparent to everyone except, apparently, the White House politicos that pressured career officials in the government to extend a 500 million dollar loan guarantee.

The crony investors were given an unusually low interest rate for such a venture. Solyndra was first in line to get loan guarantees under the Obama program to promote solar energy ventures. Solyndra private investors were given priority in case of bankruptcy that placed their claims above those of taxpayers -- a highly unusual occurrence, according to the Wall Street Journal.
So who were the type of people granted such favorable treatment? Yes, Obama donors and bundlers. That has been widely publicized. But beyond that, what type of character did they possess?

One investor behind Solyndra blurted out the truth. The loan was needed and needed urgently to fatten up the company and show a going concern (with a factory, etc).

Why?

From the column:
There was another motivator -- Solyndra's management and investors had an eye on an initial public offering.

"There was a perceived halo around the loan," said an investor with knowledge of the company. "If we get the loan, then we can definitely go public and cash out."

The huge loan would be a selling point in an initial public offering. The company promoters could point out that the loan gave them credibility -- that the government had vouched for their viability and prospects.

The private investors would cash out and when the loan came due and the company was unable to pay, taxpayers would be the ones left holding the IOUs.

Take the money and run.
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Every bit of this fits with my first suspicions. Big Fed loan was intended to supplant private capital that the investors knew was about to go south.

Is that Obama's fault? I dunno. He's at least an enabler, a dupe and under the cloud.

Radio Refugee · Sep 16, 2011

What did they know and when did they know it?

DOE KNEW that the Solyndra price/competition/business model was DOOMED many months before the loan was finalized. They KNEW that they were making the loan with BS assumptions and the company had next to no chance of financial viability. This is where Obama swings. No sane DOE functionary does this f'ed up deal on their own. It requires top down pressure.

NYT:

How Well Did DOE Know Solyndra's Technology -- and Its Market Vulnerabilities?
By SAQIB RAHIM AND PETER BEHR of ClimateWire
Published: September 15, 2011

By the time the Energy Department chose Solyndra for a half-billion-dollar loan in September 2009, a fateful market trend had already been building.

The price of polysilicon, the central ingredient in making the most prevalent solar panels, had skyrocketed for several years, into 2008. That enabled Solyndra's technology, which didn't use polysilicon, to compete with silicon-based solar modules, such as those made in China and Europe.

Solyndra had another cost advantage: Its panels were cheaper to install than other types of panels. But the price of polysilicon began a steep descent in February 2008, slumped again through the presidential election, and flattened out around May 2009 far below its peak, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. It fell from $475 per kilogram in February 2008 to $73 per kilogram in May 2009, the Bloomberg data show.

Polysilicon makes up about a quarter of the cost of a silicon-based solar module, according to Anthony Kim, a solar analyst at BNEF.

So the price drop meant that before Solyndra had received a single DOE loan guarantee dollar, a major part of its cost proposition had been undermined, if not erased.

The data add to questions about what the Department of Energy knew about Solyndra and when. Republicans on Capitol Hill, and some Democrats, are asking whether DOE performed adequate due diligence on the company, whether it rushed the loan application, and how it handled the loan once Solyndra began to struggle.

Another question is whether DOE was ready for the silicon price collapse, considering the data available at the time.

"When you're looking to support the manufacturing of an unprecedented technology and product in a volatile market, you need a pretty paranoid perspective: What are the ways the company could fail?" said Shyam Mehta, senior solar analyst at GTM Research.

In the middle of last decade, Mehta said, Germany and Spain began offering aggressive subsidies for solar power. The sudden demand led to groundbreakings for new polysilicon plants. Of course, these would take three to five years to build. So from about 2003 to 2008, he said, solar-grade silicon was in heavy undersupply -- and its price rocketed skyward.

The spike was artificial, Mehta said, because the new plants would eventually come online, bringing supply in line with demand and reducing the silicon price. But that prospect didn't stop new market entrants that could make a solar panel with little or no silicon. Solyndra was one of them.

Well-positioned for the 2009 market

Yesterday on Capitol Hill, a DOE official explained Solyndra's demise in terms of stiff Chinese competition and market conditions that neither DOE nor the private sector could have predicted.

Jonathan Silver, executive director of DOE's Loan Programs Office, said Solyndra's product seemed well-positioned in 2009. First, it could avoid polysilicon costs. Second, its panels had a unique tubular design -- rather than the conventional, flat panel -- that could be installed more cheaply.

"But polysilicon prices subsequently dropped significantly, taking Solyndra, and many industry analysts, by surprise," Silver said in testimony to a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

In his written testimony, Silver cites data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Silver also said DOE had commissioned a comprehensive review of Solyndra's technology, and the solar market, before approving the loan. The firm doing the review was R.W. Beck, a division of SAIC Inc.; a spokesman for SAIC said it is up to DOE whether to release the report.

Mehta said Solyndra's woes began in 2008, when Spain announced sharp reductions in its solar subsidies, slowing the world market. Then the financial crisis erupted, closing up the credit that was so crucial to building solar power.

By late 2009, when the Obama administration was finalizing its deal with Solyndra, the price of solar panels had dropped by half -- and the price of polysilicon dove along with it.

"That completely changed the outlook for Solyndra. The revenue model from the 2008 view of the world no longer applied," he said.

Losing a sprint against China

No one expected the polysilicon price to dive so quickly, Mehta admitted, but the crash itself "was always on the horizon. It was only a question of when, not if. You could make that claim."

When the crash came, Silver said, Solyndra began cutting costs. It redoubled its sales and marketing efforts, with some success: Its 2010 revenue was 40 percent higher than in 2009.

But the sprint to survive left it with little cash, and by summer 2010, bankruptcy loomed.

Solyndra asked DOE for a larger loan and was declined. Then Solyndra sought a $75 million emergency loan from its investors, and secured it in February 2011.

By this time, the Chinese solar giants were rolling.

Flush with $30 billion in loans from Beijing in 2010, these companies were producing solar panels by the gigawatt -- not the 250 or so megawatts Solyndra aspired to. They weren't dabbling in specialized technology but were making conventional, silicon-based solar panels.

"They're fighting over pennies in cost, tenths of a percentage in efficiency, these guys," said Matthew Feinstein, a Shanghai-based analyst with Lux Research. "They're the ones that are making it tough for high-cost American and European players to survive in this kind of a market."

In 2010, Germany and Italy had announced cuts or limits in their solar subsidies. Now, new Chinese capacity had joined the market, causing oversupply. The economy wasn't picking up.

All these factors caused the price of polysilicon to crash again in 2011.

"That was the straw that broke Solyndra's back," Mehta said. "When the second wave of price collapse hit the market, they realized there was no way to lower their costs in such a way they could sell their systems at a profit."
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Radio Refugee · Sep 16, 2011

AP enters the fray, rehashing old news but....better than ignoring it:

White House wary of Solyndra re-election effects
By JACK GILLUM Published: 3:32 AM 09/16/2011 | Updated: 10:32 PM 09/16/2011

WASHINGTON (AP) The Obama administration restructured a half-billion dollar federal loan to a troubled solar energy company in such a way that private investors including a fundraiser for President Barack Obama moved ahead of taxpayers for repayment in case of a default, government records show.

Administration officials defended the loan restructuring, saying that without an infusion of cash earlier this year, solar panel maker Solyndra Inc. would likely have faced immediate bankruptcy, putting more than 1,000 people out of work.

Even with the federal help, Solyndra filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this month and laid off its 1,100 employees.

The Fremont, Calif.-based company was the first renewable-energy company to receive a loan guarantee under a stimulus-law program to encourage green energy and was frequently touted by the Obama administration as a model. Obama visited the companys Silicon Valley headquarters last year, and Vice President Joe Biden spoke by satellite at its groundbreaking.

Since then, the implosion of the company and revelations that the administration hurried Office of Management and Budget officials to finish their review of the loan in time for the September 2009 groundbreaking has become an embarrassment for Obama as he sells his new job-creation program around the country.

An Associated Press review of regulatory filings shows that Solyndra was hemorrhaging hundreds of millions of dollars for years before the Obama administration signed off on the original $535 million loan guarantee in September 2009. The company eventually got $528 million.

Given the companys shaky financial condition, Republican lawmakers say the decision to restructure the loan raises questions about whether the administration protected political supporters at taxpayers expense.

You should have protected the taxpayers and made some forceful actions here after this analysis, Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., told a top Energy Department official this week. Because you should have seen the problems. And you should have said, Taxpayers need to be protected and this has got to stop.

The loan restructuring is one element congressional investigators are focusing on as they look into the federal loan guarantee Solyndra received under the economic stimulus law.

Under terms of the February loan restructuring, two private investors Argonaut Ventures I LLC and Madrone Partners LP stand to be repaid before the U.S. government if the solar company is liquidated. The two firms gave the company a total of $69 million in emergency loans. The loans are the only portion of their investments that have repayment priority above the U.S. government.
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Mac-7 · Sep 16, 2011

Radio Refugee said: ↑

AP enters the fray, rehashing old news but....better than ignoring it:
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I worry that Obama may catch a break on the solar panel scandals because of their sheer volume.

The public is being overwhelmed by all the bad news coming out of this administration and may tune it out due to overload.

This story really turns my stomach every time I read or hear some new development.

We used to laugh at the stupid Soviets and Red Chinese with their state planning an bread lines.

But thanks to Obama and the libs we are almost there ourselves.

Radio Refugee · Sep 17, 2011

Politico opens up the 'Arena' to comment from the anointed. There are surprisingly few defenders of this looting. There are plenty of otherwise leftists expressing caution or worry.

A few comments:

Dan Schnur
Jesse M. Unruh Institute, USC :
President Obama spoke to a joint session of Congress last week about his plan for economic growth and job creation: not once did he utter the words green technology or alternative energy. Its still too early to tell whether the Solyndra controversy was a case of intentional malfeasance or just bad decisions, and a scandal in which White House officials gamed the system to send taxpayer dollars to a campaign contributor would cause significant political damage. But even if it turns out there was no undue influence at all, and that the Department of Energy simply bet on the wrong horse, there are still immense political and policy ramifications.

Obama has been talking about green jobs for years. But in a high-profile seminal speech on the nations economy, the president and his advisors decided that even mentioning the topic was too big a risk. That doesnt mean that the green tech agenda goes away. But without visible and ongoing advocacy from the White House, the aggressive plan for the development of alternative energy sources that candidate Obama laid out isnt going anywhere.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth
Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute :
With no net August job growth, and the super committee seeking funds to reduce the deficit, the Solyndra debacle could not have come along at a worse time. Solyndra shows the futility of focusing on government investment in general, and green jobs in particular, to create employment. It shows that government cannot be trusted to direct industrial policy and spend taxpayer dollars in a worthwhile manner. All this, Americans know deep down already. Solyndra is the proof.

Bradley A. Smith
Professor, election law and campaign finance :
Republicans haven't gotten much mileage from their claims of "crony capitalism." But as fellow Arena contributor Joel Kotkin notes in a current column, under the "gentry" presidency of Barack Obama, Silicon Valley and Wall Street have done much better than Main Street.

This scandal comes right at the moment that this perception is starting to gel in the public mind, and right as the president attempts to reverse his fortunes by calling for more "green" stimulus spending. Bottom line: this is a major problem for the administration.
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That's three from the left (ostensibly). Here's the Krazy Kos Kids excusnik:

Sally Kohn
Political commentator, founder and Chief Education Officer of the Movement Vision Lab :
The Bush administration initiated loans to Solyndra - and tried to push them through before Obama was inaugurated. Since the loan went through, knowledgeable private investors - high-powered Democrats and Republicans - have invested in Solyndra as well. But Solyndra couldn't compete with Chinese counterparts because the Chinese government subsidizes its green jobs industry 30 times more than we do in the United States, helping jumpstart the new industry.

If there's a scandal here, it's that America is inadequately investing in the jobs of the future.
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Last one from the right:

Soren Dayton
New Media Strategies :
There are so many questions raised by this.

At this point, the most generous reading is that someone who has extraordinary White House access got accelerated approval of a loan with incomplete due diligence.

Then we get specific questions like:

1. Why did a company with a B+ rating, below investment grade, get a loan at 1.12%, which was less than inflation?

2. After Solyndra failed to go public because the private sector refused to invest in the company, why did the US government give up the senior debt position to the company controlled by a White House donor?

3. It appears that in 2009, the Bush administration rejected the loan. Why was it the first loan granted by the Obama administration? What different conclusions did the Obama administration come to regarding the status of Solyndra and their business model?

When you have these kind of irregularities and the vice president's chief of staff pressuring the loan to move forward, you have some serious questions that need to be asked.

When this is combined with things like Wind Capital Group, the company run by the brother of Democratic Rep. Russ Carnahan getting a $107 million grant, you raise serious questions about the underlying political agenda of the government subsidizing green energy (or any other energy)

It also raises serious questions about the stimulus. We now know that the shovel ready projects weren't shovel ready. We now know that there was a specific political agenda instead of a look toward delivering growth

And the White House is calling it a scheduling issue.
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Radio Refugee · Sep 17, 2011

First rate summary of the fraud by Andrew McCarthy. It's long and involved and spells it all out. This was fraud. No other conclusion can be brooked.

The Solyndra Fraud
The solar-energy company was a con game.

The Solyndra debacle is not just Obama-style crony socialism as usual. It is a criminal fraud. That is the theory that would be guiding any competent prosecutor’s office in the investigation of a scheme that cost victims — in this case, American taxpayers — a fortune.

Fraud against the United States is one of the most serious felony offenses in the federal penal law. It is even more serious than another apparent Solyndra violation that has captured congressional attention: the Obama administration’s flouting of a statute designed to protect taxpayers.

Homing in on one of the several shocking aspects of the Solyndra scandal, lawmakers noted that, a few months before the “clean energy” enterprise went belly-up last week, the Obama Energy Department signed off on a sweetheart deal. In the event of bankruptcy — the destination to which it was screamingly obvious Solyndra was headed despite the president’s injection of $535 million in federal loans — the cozily connected private investors would be given priority over American taxpayers. In other words, when the busted company’s assets were sold off, Obama pals would recoup some of their losses, while you would be left holding the half-billion-dollar bag.

As Andrew Stiles reported here at NRO, Republicans on the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee say this arrangement ran afoul of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This law — compassionate conservatism in green bunting — is a monstrosity, under which Leviathan, which can’t run a post office, uses your money to pick winners and losers in the economy’s energy sector. The idea is cockamamie, but Congress did at least write in a mandate that taxpayers who fund these “investments” must be prioritized over other stakeholders. The idea is to prevent cronies from pushing ahead of the public if things go awry — as they are wont to do when pols fancy themselves venture capitalists.

On the Energy Policy Act, the administration’s malfeasance is significant, but secondary. That’s because the act is not a penal statute. It tells the cabinet officials how to structure these “innovative technology” loans, but it provides no remedy if Congress’s directives are ignored.

The criminal law, by contrast, is not content to assume the good faith of government officials. It targets anyone — from low-level swindlers to top elective officeholders — who attempts to influence the issuance of government loans by making false statements; who engages in schemes to defraud the United States; or who conspires “to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof, in any manner or for any purpose.” The penalties are steep: Fraud in connection with government loans, for example, can be punished by up to 30 years in the slammer.

Although Solyndra was a private company, moreover, it was using its government loans as a springboard to go public. When the sale of securities is involved, federal law criminalizes fraudulent schemes, false statements of material fact, and statements that omit any “material fact necessary in order to make the statements made . . . not misleading.” And we’re not just talking about statements made in required SEC filings. Any statement made to deceive the market can be actionable. In 2003, for example, the Justice Department famously charged Martha Stewart with securities fraud. Among other allegations, prosecutors cited public statements she had made in press releases and at a conference for securities analysts — statements in which she withheld damaging information in an effort to inflate the value of her corporation and its stock.

That’s exactly what President Obama did on May 26, 2010, with his Solyndra friends about to launch their initial public offering of stock. The solar-panel company’s California factory was selected as the fitting site for a presidential speech on the virtues of confiscating taxpayer billions to prop up pie-in-the-sky clean-energy businesses.

By then, the con game was already well under way. Solyndra had first tried to get Energy Act funding during the Bush administration, but had been rebuffed shortly before President Bush left office. Small wonder: Solyndra, as former hedge-fund manager Bruce Krasting concluded, was “an absolute complete disaster.” Its operating expenses, including supply costs, nearly doubled its revenue in 2009 — and that’s without factoring in capital expenditures and other costs in what, Krasting observes, is a “low margin” industry. The chance that Solyndra would ever become profitable was essentially nonexistent, particularly given that solar-panel competitors backed by China produce energy at drastically lower prices.

Yet, as Stiles reports, within six days of Obama’s taking office, an Energy Department official acknowledged that the Solyndra “approval process” was suddenly being considered anew. Eventually, the administration made Solyndra the very first recipient of a public loan guarantee when the Energy Act program was beefed up in 2009 — just part of nearly a trillion dollars burned through under the Obama stimulus.

For a while after Solyndra tanked, the administration stonewalled the House subcommittee’s investigation, but we now know that minions in the Energy Department and the Office of Management and Budget had enormous qualms about the Solyndra loan. They realized that the company was hemorrhaging money and, even with the loan, would lack the necessary working capital to turn that equation around. Yet they caved under White House pressure to sign off in time for Vice President Joe Biden to make a ballyhooed announcement of the loan in September 2009. An OMB e-mail laments that the timing of the loan approval was driven by the politics of the announcement “rather than the other way around.”

Why so much pressure to give half a billion dollars to a doomed venture? The administration insists it had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Solyndra’s big backers include the George Kaiser Family Foundation. No, of course not. George Kaiser, an Oklahoma oil magnate, just happens to be a major Obama fundraiser who bundled oodles in contributions for the president’s 2008 campaign. Solyndra officers and investors are said to have visited the White House no fewer than 20 times while the loan guarantee was being considered and, later, revised. Kaiser, too, made several visits — but not to worry: Both he and administration officials deny any impropriety. You’re to believe that the White House was just turning up the heat on OMB and DOE because Solyndra seemed like such a swell investment.
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More....

Radio Refugee · Sep 17, 2011

Continued...

Except it didn’t seem so swell to people who knew how to add and subtract, and those people weren’t all at OMB and DOE. Flush with confidence that their mega-loan from Uncle Sam would make the company attractive to private investors, Solyndra’s backers prepared to take the company public. Unfortunately, SEC rules for an initial public offering of stock require the disclosure of more than Obama speeches glowing with solar power. Companies that want access to the market have to reveal their financial condition.

In Solyndra’s case, outside auditors from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) found that condition to be dire. “The company has suffered recurring losses from operations, negative cash flows since inception, and has a net stockholders’ deficit,” the PWC accountants concluded. Even with the gigantic Obama loan, Solyndra was such a basket case that PWC found “substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.”

The “going concern” language is not boilerplate. As Townhall finance maven John Ransom explains, it is a term of art to which auditors resort when there is an extraordinary need to protect themselves and the company from legal liability. Angry investors who’ve lost their shirts tend to scapegoat the loser company’s accountants. In truth, even if the accountants affixed a neon “going concern” sign to the company’s financial statements, investors would have no one but themselves to blame. But it is unusual: The language is absent from the statements of many companies that actually end up going bankrupt. Auditors reserve it for the hopeless causes — like Solyndra.

With no alternative if they wanted to make a play for market financing, Solyndra’s backers disclosed the auditors’ bleak diagnosis in March 2010. The government had thus been aware of it for two months when President Obama made his May 26 Solyndra speech — the speech Solyndra backers were clearly hoping would mitigate the damage.

As president, Obama had a fiduciary responsibility to be forthright about Solyndra’s grim prospects — in speaking to the American taxpayers whose money he had redistributed, and to the American investors who were about to be solicited for even more funding. Instead, he pulled a Martha Stewart.

The president looked us in the eye and averred that, when it came to channeling public funds into private hands, “We can see the positive impacts right here at Solyndra.” He bragged that the $535 billion loan had enabled the company to build the state-of-the-art factory in which he was then speaking. He said nothing about how Solyndra was continuing to lose money — public money — at a catastrophic pace. Instead, he painted the brightest of pictures: 3,000 construction workers to build the thriving plant; manufacturers in 22 states building an endless stream of supplies; technicians in a dozen states constructing the advanced equipment that would make the factory hum; and Solyndra fully “expect[ing] to hire a thousand workers to manufacture solar panels and sell them across America and around the world.”

Not content with that rosy portrait, the president further predicted a “ripple effect”: Solyndra would “generate business for companies throughout our country who will create jobs supplying this factory with parts and materials.” Sure it would. The auditors had scrutinized Solyndra and found it to have, from its inception, a fatally flawed business model that was hurtling toward collapse. Obama touted it as a redistribution success story that would be rippling jobs, growth, and spectacular success for the foreseeable future.
It was a breathtaking misrepresentation. Happily, it proved insufficient to dupe investors who, unlike taxpayers, get to choose where their money goes. They stacked what the administration was saying against what the PWC auditors were saying and wisely went with PWC. Solyndra had to pull its initial public offering due to lack of interest.

But fraud doesn’t have to be fully successful to be a fraud, and this one still had another chapter to go. As the IPO failed and the company inevitably sank in a sea of red ink, Solyndra’s panicked backers pleaded with the administration to restructure the loan terms — to insulate them from their poor business judgment, allowing them to recoup some of their investment while the public took the fall.
It should go without saying that the duty of soi-disant public servants is to serve the public. In this instance, the proper course was clear. As structured, the loan gave the public first dibs on Solyndra’s assets if it collapsed, and, as we’ve seen, the law requires it. There was no good reason to contemplate a change.

In addition, as Andrew Stiles relates, OMB had figured out that there was no economic sense in restructuring: Solyndra was heading for bankruptcy anyway, and an immediate liquidation would net the government a better deal — about $170 million better. The case for leaving things where they stood was so palpable that OMB openly feared “questions will be asked” if DOE proceeded with an unjustifiable restructuring. So, with numbing predictability, the Obama administration proceeded with an unjustifiable restructuring. In exchange for lending some of their own money and thus buying more time, Solyndra officials were given priority over taxpayers with respect to the first $75 million in the event of a bankruptcy — the event all the insiders and government officials could see coming from the start, and that hit the rest of us like a $535 billion thunderbolt last week.

The administration’s rationalization is priceless. According to DOE officials, the restructuring was necessary “to create a situation whereby investors felt there was a value in their investment.” Of course, the value in an investment is the value created by the business in which the investment is made. Here, Solyndra had no value. Investors could be enticed only by an invalid arrangement to recoup some of their losses — by a scheme to make the public an even bigger sap.

The word for such schemes is fraud.
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Radio Refugee · Sep 18, 2011

John Kass, cynical wizard of Chitown, weighs on on the same old same old. Don't skip this one.

Obama's Solyndra scandal reeks of the Chicago Way

Those of us from Chicago know exactly what the Solyndra scandal smells like. And It doesn't smell fresh and green.

John Kass
September 18, 2011

The Solyndra scandal cost at least a half-billion public dollars. It is plaguing President Barack Obama. And it's being billed as a Washington story.

But back in Obama's political hometown, those of us familiar with the Chicago Way can see something else in Solyndra something that the Washington crowd calls "optics." In fact, it's not just a Washington saga it has all the elements of a Chicago City Hall story, except with more zeros.

The FBI is investigating what happened with Solyndra, a solar panel company that got a $535 million government-backed loan with the help of the Obama White House over the objections of federal budget analysts.

Obama and Vice President Joe Biden got a nice photo op. They got to make speeches about being "green." But then Solyndra went bankrupt. Americans lost jobs. Taxpayers got stuck with the bill. And members of Congress are now in high dudgeon and making speeches.

Federal investigators want to know what role political fundraising played in the guarantee of the questionable loan. Washington bureaucrats warned the deal was lousy. And White House spokesmen flail desperately, like weakened victims in a cheesy vampire movie.

So forget optics. What about smell? It smells bad, and it's going to smell worse.

Or, did you really believe it when the White House mouthpieces who are also Chicago City Hall mouthpieces promised they were bringing a new kind of politics to Washington?

This is not a new kind of politics. It's the old kind. The Chicago kind.

And now the Tribune Washington Bureau has reported that the U.S. Department of Energy employee who helped monitor the Solyndra loan guarantee was one of Obama's top fundraisers.

Fundraising? Contracts? Imagine that.

Steve Spinner was the Obama administration official in charge of handing out billions and billions of tax dollars to "green" energy deals. According to the Tribune story, Spinner the other day invited Obama's national political finance committee to a meeting in Chicago.

The name of the Obama fundraising initiative?

"Technology for Obama."

The idea of the Obama fundraisers getting together, talking "green," and perhaps offering taxpayer loan guarantees to insider businesses in the interest of helping the environment it all seems rather fresh.

Like a mountain meadow.

Until you realize it's the same old politics, the same kind practiced in Washington and Chicago and anywhere else where appetites are satisfied by politicians. When the government picks winners and losers, who's the loser? Just look in the mirror, hold that thought, and tell me later.

Republicans are hoping to hang this around Obama's political neck, and they're doing a good job of it now because his approval ratings are low and the jobless numbers are abysmal and the Democrats are in full killer-rabbit panic. But there have been Republican national scandals, too, and they're always ridiculously and depressingly similar.

At least in Illinois our scandals are quite ecumenical, with Republicans eager to help Democrats steal whatever they can grab.

In Solyndra, like any proper City Hall political scandal, there are similar archetypes.

There are the guys who count. The guys who bring the cash. They count because they do the counting. They have leverage. They're always there at the fundraisers. And so they're the ones who are allowed to gorge at the public trough.

The bureaucrats are the fulcrum so the guys with the leverage can lift great weight without too much effort. And while they might whine privately among themselves, they don't hold news conferences to blow the whistle.

They keep their mouths shut until the deal is done. If anyone gets caught and the problem becomes public, at least they've got email to cover their behinds. And they're doing a good job covering.

But there's one group that doesn't get their behinds covered.

Instead, their behinds are right out there, suspended foolishly, and waiting to get kicked.

We're the taxpayers in Illinois we call ourselves chumbolones because we're the ones who stupidly end up covering all the losses. As in the Solyndra mess.

It's the Chicago Way, but instead of a paving or trucking contract, it's a "green" solar panel contract. The company received a $535 million loan.

"The optics of a Solyndra default will be bad," according to a Jan. 31 email from an Office of Management and Budget staffer printed in the Washington Post. "If Solyndra defaults down the road, the optics will arguably be worse later than they would be today. In addition, the timing will likely coincide with the 2012 campaign season heating up."

I love the use of "optics." It's one of those bloodless words finding favor these days.

"Optics" suggests bureaucrats might think in terms of symbolism, political hieroglyphs, in grand vistas, rather than in hard numbers, like the $535,000,000 that went poof.

But it's not their money, is it? It's ours.

So this is not about Washington optics after all. The Solyndra scandal is about the Washington smell of things.

Those of us from Chicago know exactly what it smells like. And It doesn't smell fresh and green.
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Jurassic Media Takes Up Solyndra Looting/Loan Guarantees

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