A friend just posted this interesting quote:
How does Obama’s track record reflect on this?
Not the point. The point is that this particular company, Solyndra, had already been denied based on lack of viability… and yet Obama went ahead and expedited approval of the loan, which, the way it was structured, left taxpayers holding the bag.
That is especially smelly.[/quote]
Well I read up a bit on this. I was wondering to what extent this is just a stick used by the right to beat Obama and green energy. Here are some key points.
So the reasoning for this act seems to be sound in my opinion. Fred would disagree, but either way it was introduced and signed into law by Bush.
[quote]Advertising of this program in August 2006 resulted in the Department of Energy receiving 134 preliminary applications for the program, including one from the Fremont, California-based Solyndra Corporation in order to build a new manufacturing facility “Fab 2” for its unique solar panel technology.
In October 2007, the Department of Energy had completed vetting of the applications and had narrowed the number it was still considering to 16, one of which was the application from Solyndra. [/quote]
So they made it to the final 16, still under the Bush administration.
That is not quite as you are suggesting that it was rejected on grounds that it was not viable. If you have something to back that up, I would be interested.
Looking at the NYTimes article, silicon prices were much higher at the time of the loan, the Chinese flooded the market causing prices to drop by 70%, and the manufacturing costs were much higher than expected.
A bad investment, sure. Political involvement by Obama, perhaps. The wiki article also notes.
[quote=“Mick”]Well I read up a bit on this. I was wondering to what extent this is just a stick used by the right to beat Obama and green energy. Here are some key points.
[quote]Advertising of this program in August 2006 resulted in the Department of Energy receiving 134 preliminary applications for the program, including one from the Fremont, California-based Solyndra Corporation in order to build a new manufacturing facility “Fab 2” for its unique solar panel technology.
That is not quite as you are suggesting that it was rejected on grounds that it was not viable. If you have something to back that up, I would be interested.[/quote][/quote]
Hmmm… You might be right about that, Mick… that the loan was rejected by Bush Admin because it was not viable. There are still lots of documents to go through, but, I’ll concede this point, for now. In any event, if the loan was then later approved after due diligence, then that indicates a lack of competence or negligence.
And I stand by my primary complaint: The Obama Admin structured the loan so that profit was privatized while loss was socialized. That was wrong. Given the projections that it will be years before alternative energies are really feasible, perhaps the Government should spend the money on R&D rather than on struggling commercial enterprises?
[quote=“Toe Save”]A friend just posted this interesting quote:
How does Obama’s track record reflect on this?[/quote]
Pretty much the same as any other President’s.
[quote=“Tigerman”]
Hmmm… You might be right about that, Mick… that the loan was rejected by Bush Admin because it was not viable. There are still lots of documents to go through, but, I’ll concede this point, for now. In any event, if the loan was then later approved after due diligence, then that indicates a lack of competence or negligence.[/quote]
Thank you, 
This link which was included as a note in the wiki article I think covers a lot of what seems like bad reporting. What The Press Is Getting Wrong About Solyndra
But was it the Obama Admin who structured the deal? We have the Energy Policy Act of 2005 passed by Bush that allowed 134 preliminary applications to try and get the loans, and then over the next 3 years, the Department of Energy vetted the applicants and finally the same people who are career officials, the same ones who were there under Bush who gave approval.
It was the Department of Energy who promised Solyndra the money very shortly after Obama was sworn in. Perhaps his administration pushed for the deal, I could believe that, but don’t see the proof they did. As for structuring the deal, I would think it more likely it was done in the 3 years they had to do that prior to Obama being inaugurated and by career officials, rather then the Obama Admin in the few weeks they had since taking office.
edit/ After going back and reading the above article it seems there was restructuring of the deal by the DOE. But looking into the details, I don’t think the characterization that this was done just to benefit Solyndra is accurate at all.
Well since your both mods here, perhaps you could split this Solyndra discussion into it’s own thread if one doesn’t already exist? Regardless of the details I don’t really think that this affair really offers much in the way of a comentary on Obama’s performance.
Politics as usual from my perspective. Change the name Solyndra to Haliburton and it’s all business as usual.
Gman gets a nod from me. Bush was no angel when it came to government spend and support for connected corporations. This needs to stop whether for Democrat or Republican. Lets see how that happens and then judge. In the meantime, which is worse? Bush´s hypocrisy about smaller government and believing in free enterprise or Obama´s misguided but upfront socialist and statist policies?
That media matters link is great. It’s amazing how much the media gets wrong. So much for the theory on the “liberal media.” Obama was getting roasted by Huffington and the NYT for things that they couldn’t back up and some of which had to be later retracted. I think the media just felt like they needed an Obama scandal, since there hadn’t been one. Only time will tell if the truth actually overrides all of the misinformation out there, but given that many people still believe Iraq was behind 9/11, I have little faith :s
It’s clear to me from reading that page that this was a problem not with politics, but with career government officials. Also, theoretically, I don’t agree that the government should be guaranteeing loans to ANY company. This had nothing to do with Bush nor Obama, just a systemic problem in government that neither party is going to address because they are far too busy pointing fingers at each other.
Obama stands by these guys? Or was it these guys inspire him?
:s
“?”
Ironic, no?
I doubt it. Just ignorant. Proably does not know that ask is not a question here but a command a directive a declarative sentence. Definitely must be a Democrat AND a liberal to boot. Probably imagines himself quite the intelligent one though. Love all the hyphens… reminds me of my propensity to use ellipses… but I imagine that doing so is clever… is it not! deliberate?
Well, it’s thought provoking any way.
What on earth is thought !!! of all words!!! provoking about someone holding up a sign with a question mark and hyphen overload asking more of his country rather than offering to contribute? other than the natural conclusion of a maternalistic policy of take-care-of-them-folksism that has finally led to them being incapable of doing anything but bawling for more while doing less? forget the let them eat cake, these lazy fuckers on caviar and still not satisfied. Let him starve for a few weeks with no food stamps, no medicaid, no welfare, no unemployment, no disability and then see if he can finally learn how to use hyphens and a fucking question mark. ??? thought proviking? yeah. big time… I just had a thought! or did I?
I was referring to his use of the Kennedy quote combined with questions, as being thought provoking. The guy doesn’t leap out at me as an Ivy League type. Perhaps he is trying to convey in a simple way the rhythm of Kennedy’s voice, with the slight pauses between words. Anyway, why fixate on the punctuation?
Well, it’s thought provoking any way.[/quote]
Not to me it isn’t. [quote=“fred smith”]What on earth is thought !!! of all words!!! provoking about someone holding up a sign with a question mark and hyphen overload asking more of his country rather than offering to contribute? other than the natural conclusion of a maternalistic policy of take-care-of-them-folksism that has finally led to them being incapable of doing anything but bawling for more while doing less? forget the let them eat cake, these lazy fuckers on caviar and still not satisfied. Let him starve for a few weeks with no food stamps, no medicaid, no welfare, no unemployment, no disability and then see if he can finally learn how to use hyphens and a fucking question mark. ??? thought provoking? yeah. big time… I just had a thought! or did I?[/quote]
I think what happened fred was the same thing that happens when you drink a sweet Belgian beer, that being an immediately physical repulsion. Your reasoning process just threw up in its mouth.
Right, he turned JFK’s call to action into a call for more handouts. That’s so provoking and transparent it’s shameful. 
Here he’s deeply wrong on two important counts.
[quote=“Greenwald”]Obama: I can’t comment on Wall Street prosecutions
President Obama was interviewed by 60 Minutes‘ Steve Kroft last night. Kroft mentioned a new poll showing that 42% of Americans believe Obama’s policies most favor Wall Street rather than average Americans (only 35% believe the opposite). Kroft speculated that this was due in part to the fact that, as he put it, “there’s not been any criminal prosecutions of people on Wall Street,” and then asked Obama whether he was “disappointed” with that development. Obama replied:
If only that were what President Obama really believed and how he actually comported himself.
On January 12, 2009, The New York Times – under the headline: “Obama signals his reluctance to investigate Bush programs” — reported that “President-elect Barack Obama signaled in an interview broadcast Sunday that he was unlikely to authorize a broad inquiry into Bush administration programs like domestic eavesdropping or the treatment of terrorism suspects”; specifically, he expressed the “belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards” and announced that “part of my job is to make sure that, for example, at the CIA, you’ve got extraordinarily talented people who are working very hard to keep Americans safe. I don’t want them to suddenly feel like they’ve got spend their all their time looking over their shoulders.” On April 19, Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, went on ABC News and announced that the President opposes investigations not only for the CIA torturers themselves, but also high-level Bush officials who devised and authorized the policies.
[…]
So the White House, and the President himself, publicly harangued the DOJ for months not to prosecute Bush officials (once the damage was done and controversy erupted over the White House’s constant pressure on the “independent” DOJ, Obama cursorily acknowledged that it was a decision for the DOJ to make). Beyond that, the White House applied constant, intense political pressure on the Attorney General not to proceed with plans to try the 9/11 defendants in a civilian court. In April of this year, President Obama, while charges were pending, publicly decreed Bradley Manning guilty even though it is his direct military subordinates who will be judging Manning’s case, possibly jeopardizing that prosecution on the ground of undue command influence. And it was recently revealed that Obama officials are pressuring the New York State Attorney General to sign onto a full-scale settlement agreement with banks rather than continue to investigate Wall Street’s mortgage fraud. Even in this interview with Kroft, Obama observed from what he called “40,000 feet” that “some of the most damaging behavior on Wall Street, in some cases, some of the least ethical behavior on Wall Street, wasn’t illegal.”
Does this sound like a President who actually believes that it’s improper for him to “comment on the decisions about particular prosecutions” to ensure “there’s no political influence on decisions made by professional prosecutors”? Or does this sound like a President who applies exactly that kind of political pressure on the DOJ when it suits him, and is now cynically invoking this excuse to avoid having to take responsibility for the virtually full-scale immunity given to the financial-crisis-causing Wall Street criminals under his watch?[/quote]
Obama was not wrong as a senator to criticize Bush and his security programs. Once he became president, his responsibilities changed and he realized that as president, he had to act and think in a different way. He no longer had the luxury of being a senator. I see nothing wrong with this volte face.
On the surface, this would seem to be an issue but I disagree.
-
The actions most likely fall into a gray zone… very very gray. It is likely that no prosecution will be successful and even worse that the case could go on for years like 20. How does this help stabilize the economy and rebuild the financial markets when you inject such an element of risk? There is nothing to be gained here by extensive prosecutions of the kind suggested. Obama is wise to shut these down.
-
That said, what really did Wall Street and the financial institutions do? And here is where I have a problem with the ultra-stupid or at the very minimum incredibly incoherent Occupy Wall Street movement. The problem was that senators and representatives got involved in pushing for mortgages for unqualified buyers. Wall Street and the financial institutions believed that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae´s guarantees of these mortgages made them a stable financial instrument sorta kinda like bonds. They then packaged and reissued as they would for any other investment. Believe me… the reason the government does not want to push these prosecutions is because all of this will come right home to roost on the government. Ultimately, the government will be liable for guaranteeing those mortgages. No wonder it wants this to all go away and quietly. I think that the decision not to run for re-election by Barney Frank and Senator Dodd are predicated on the very conditions that I am describing above. If they did not get their tales out of Dodge, they might find that like Jon Corzine, they might be sitting in front of a congressional commitee answering a lot of painful questions themselves. Congress allocating itself such a prerogative would be shameless hypocrisy as almost all senators and representatives signed onto these mortgage expansions and they do not want the public to be reminded of this.
Again, this is a disaster financially but one that had the best of intentions. This is why we conservatives tend to look at liberal dreams with such angst. We have seen all of this before. We have seen the results. War on Drugs… War on Poverty… Education… Health… Mortgages…
Obama could stand on a soap box and decry all of this as he did when he was a senator or he can rise above this to act responsibly as he has to solve the problem and put our nation back on a sound financial footing. The fact that he has done the latter shows that he has, in fact, become presidential. THAT is precisely why I will seriously consider voting for him in November 2012.
[quote=“fred smith”]
Obama could stand on a soap box and decry all of this as he did when he was a senator or he can rise above this to act responsibly as he has to solve the problem and put our nation back on a sound financial footing. The fact that he has done the latter shows that he has, in fact, become presidential. THAT is precisely why I will seriously consider voting for him in November 2012.[/quote]
Well said! At the end of the day, he has put action before image in his presidency.
Well, the spotlight is where it needs to be Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Wonder if the Occupy Wall Street protesters will finally figure this out? Does it matter?
[quote]NEW YORK (CNNMoney) – The Securities and Exchange Commission charged six former executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with securities fraud on Friday for misrepresenting their holdings of high-risk mortgage loans. The SEC is targeting three former executives of Freddie Mac (FMCC, Fortune 500), including chief executive officer Daniel Mudd, chief risk officer Enrico Dallavecchia and executive vice president of single-family mortgage business Thomas Lund. The agency is also going after three former executives of Fannie Mae (FNMA, Fortune 500): CEO Richard Syron, executive vice president and chief business officer Patricia Cook and executive vice president for the single family guarantee business Donald Bisenius. The SEC is seeking financial penalties against them, but did not specify an amount. The suit claims that the executives knowingly approved of misleading statements, downplayed the size of their holdings of subprime loans and falsely claimed that their risky investments were minimal and manageable. “Fannie and Freddie were not innocent victims, but were major players in a game they helped design and develop,” said SEC attorney Andrew Stoltmann. “The bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has cost American taxpayers in excess of $168 billion with potentially another $51 billion to come.” The executives who engaged in this conduct must be held liable," he said. Mudd’s lawyer declined to comment.
Lawyers for Syron said the SEC’s case is “fatally flawed” and meritless. “There was no shortage of meaningful disclosures, all of which permitted the reader to asses the degree of risk in Freddie Mac’s guaranteed portfolio,” Thomas Green and Mark Hopson said in a statement. Mortgage finance giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which play a central role in the U.S. housing market by keeping the cost of mortgages lower, received the biggest federal bailout of the financial crisis, topping $124 billion. In addition, top executives have drawn some $100 million in pay. The U.S. government took over Fannie and Freddie on Sept. 7, 2008, along with the $5 trillion in home loans they were backing at the time. That’s when Mudd and Syron left the companies. The mortgage giants, which were created by the U.S. government, were badly hurt in 2007 by the sharp decline in home prices as well as rising mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures. Fannie Mae is currently led by Michael Williams, who become CEO in April of 2009. Williams succeeded Herbert Allison, who replaced Mudd.Freddie Mac is currently led by Charles Halderman, who replaced the former CEO David Moffet in 2009 who had taken over for Richard Syron. The turnover at Freddie Mac continues. Halderman said he will resign in 2012.[/quote]
money.cnn.com/2011/12/16/news/co … ?hpt=hp_t2
The irritating thing about all of this is that really this is essentially right out of the failed playbook of the savings and loan bailout/crash of the late 1980s and 1990s. Really, not even 20 years and the SAME mistake is made? or the people involved got their share and simply did not care?
I mostly agree with you. I read the Bowles-Simpson report and have discussed parts of it in this forum. Had Obama come out strongly in favor of it, rather than coming up with his own ill-defined plan at the last minute, there would have been a real chance to get it through Congress.
However, it’s worth noting that Speaker Boehner and President Obama came up with their own 10-year, bipartisan plan that included 4 to 1 cuts to tax hikes that was roundly rejected by the Tea Party caucus in the House. Tea Party Republicans have been the primary obstacle to a debt deal, not Obama. And that’s because they’re not interested in deals; they want all of their agenda or nothing.