"Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison just resigned, as the controversy stubbornly refuses to go away. Seems worth revisiting the loans once again, since I've spent a little time looking more deeply at the program over the past few days.
Supporters of these programs claim that they're a necessary part of winning the green future because these are investments that are too risky, or too big, for private capital to take on.
I have highlighted what jumped out at me: most of the money has gone to enormous companies that should have no trouble accessing capital. Established utilities, large multinational auto manufacturers, a global warehouse owner. The bulk of these funds are not going to rectify some gap in the capital markets. They're straight subsidies to huge corporations. Even some of the smaller firms/deals are owned by large corporations like Total SA.
Giving large, established companies extra-cheap loans to build power plants, run transmission lines, and fix up the roofs of their warehouses is, in the immortal words of P.J. O'Rourke, like paying a Dairy Queen owner to keep his ice cream freezers on.
Why does that matter? Because it skews our perceptions of the usefulness of the program. If we loan a bunch of money to firms that could easily get the money elsewhere, and a little bit of money to firms that are very risky, we can claim a high "success" rate even if all the risky firms fail. "
[Atlantic]
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