Mike “Mish” Shedlock looks at the breakneck pace of loss at Solyndra, a solar power company that just went bankrupt:
The federal government should get out of the business of picking technology and “green” winners. Government backing of alternate energy companies has been nothing short of disastrous.
A solar energy firm touted by the administration in 2010 as a as a “gleaming example of green technology” today announced bankruptcy. 1,100+ employees will be fired.
[. . .]
The “seen” math is simple enough. $535 million divided by 1,100 is roughly $486,363 per job saved, now job lost.
That is just the “seen” consequence. The “unseen” consequences are not directly calculable but by giving Solyndra money, other companies that the free market would have preferred have been harmed, perhaps permanently harmed.
Although Obama clearly rushed this pathetic company for a nice photo-op, this is not a simple case of the president failing to do his homework as the GAO implies. The government has no business promoting this kind of crap in the first place.
In this case, it is rather amazing how fast Solyndra wasted over half a billion US taxpayer dollars, so fast I suspect fraud.
