Megan McArdle tries to figure out how Solyndra managed to spend nearly a billion dollars in two years:
By my count, Since September 2009, they borrowed $535 million from us to get their second fab up and running, raised $219 million in a private equity offering, got $175 million from issuing convertible promissory notes after their IPO was pulled, received $75 million in the last-ditch round where the DOE allowed their seniority to be subordinated, and maybe got a loan from a different bank. By the time they filed bankruptcy in August, my understanding is that they were basically out of cash.
The Washington Post‘s rather scathing new account, full of employees saying that post-loan, Solyndra started spending money like it was about to be discontinued, says the new facility for which we loaned them all that money cost $344 million to build. So it seems that in the space of two years, Solyndra managed to spend $344 million building a factory and $660 million . . . doing what?
