Doubling Down On Dumb
“I mean, I had a friend who said, ‘You don’t just pick the winners and losers, you pick the losers.’ This is not the kind of policy you want to have if you want to get American energy secure.” ~ Mitt Romney, during the first Presidential debate, lambasting the Obama administration for doling out billions of dollars to failing green-energy companies.
And the loser heap continues to grow, with news that two more green-energy boondoggles that received millions of dollars from taxpayers, courtesy of the Obama administration, have filed for bankruptcy.
First up, Satcon Technology Corp, a solar energy company that received a $3 million grant from the Department of Energy.
Satcon, which makes inverters that help feed solar-generated power into the grid, said in January that it would cut about 35 percent of its workforce and close its Canadian plant.
The Boston, Massachusetts-based company has reported a loss for 22 consecutive quarters.
“The underlying problem for Satcon was that even during boom times in the solar industry, the company was never able to sustain profitability,” said Raymond James analyst Pavel Molchanov.
A123 Systems Inc. (AONE), the electric car battery maker that received a $249.1 million federal grant, filed for bankruptcy protection and said it would sell its automotive business assets to Johnson Controls Inc. (JCI)
…
President Barack Obama called A123’s CEO [David] Vieau and then- Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm during a September 2010 event celebrating the opening of the plant in Livonia that the company received the U.S. grant to help build.
“This is about the birth of an entire new industry in America — an industry that’s going to be central to the next generation of cars,” Obama said in the phone call, according to a transcript provided by the White House. “When folks lift up their hoods on the cars of the future, I want them to see engines and batteries that are stamped: Made in America.”
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A123 has posted at least 14 straight quarterly losses. Its shares had fallen 85 percent this year to 24 cents as of yesterday’s close in New York.
Sometimes delusion is just another word for dumb.
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