Bill Clinton demonstrates the business acumen as Barack Obama. That is to say, none.
It seems axiomatic that when a program is proven to be a failure, democrats will redouble their efforts to institute it.
Government-run health care has never worked out as planned. It is headed toward bankruptcy in England and it costs far more than was advertised in Massachusetts. Barack Obama convinced addle-brained democrats that adding 30 million people to the health care rolls in the US was going to cost less than it does now.
Spain’s green economy was a financial calamity. Thus far solar government-backed solar programs in the US have been a disaster. Both Solyndra and Evergreen Solar served as poster children for Barack Obama, both received lots of money from Obama’s stimulus and both have gone bankrupt.
Bill Clinton, always up for a challenge, seems eager to prove that he is as big a fool as is Barack Obama when it comes to business. He tells us that all the green movement needs is a little love money.
Former President Bill Clinton said Tuesday that the success of the alternative energy movement is hampered by a lack of financing. His comments came as world leaders attending his annual philanthropic conference expressed fears about rising seas.
Rising seas?
Anyway, he says what we need to do is simply throw more money at more Solyndra’s.
Pointing to Germany’s successful creation of solar energy jobs as a model for other nations to emulate, Clinton said the main issue with green energy is a lack of proper funding.
“This has to work economically,” he said. “You have to come up with the money on the front end.”
Seems to me that $500 million is a lot of “up-front” money. But hang on- let’s have a look at that Germany’s successful solar job creation:
The outlook has turned bleak for the entire solar industry. Companies that were the darlings of the stock market and the political world until recently are now experiencing a sharp downturn. Their share prices have plunged, as they downsize and write off millions in losses.
At Phoenix Solar, a systems supplier based in the Bavarian town of Sulzemoos, sales in the period from March to July were down more than 60 percent over the same period last year. The management of Berlin-based Solon is worried about the company’s ability to survive. Its future hinges on the banks extending a loan that expires at the end of the year.
In the United States, a few well-known solar companies have already run out of money. Last week Solyndra, a Silicon Valley maker of solar power arrays, filed for bankruptcy and laid off 1,100 workers.
A number of German companies are also facing legal problems. The former supervisory board chairman of Conergy, Dieter Ammer, faces charges of accounting fraud and insider trading in a Hamburg court, although he disputes the allegations. The public prosecutor’s office in the Bavarian twin cities of Nuremberg-Fürth is looking into allegations of wrongdoing by Utz Claassen, a former top executive at Solar Millennium.
Faced with their own problems, it comes as little consolation to the erstwhile sun kings that their counterparts in wind energy are dealing with their own woes. Nordex, a pioneer in the industry, plunged into the red in the first half of the year, forcing it to eliminate more than 100 jobs and reduce costs by €50 million ($70 million). In 2010, German wind turbine manufacturers as a whole saw revenues and jobs decline for the first time.
It also appears that the US is not alone experiencing “unexpected” events:
The gloomy news from the solar and wind power industries comes as something of a surprise.
Chinese competition? Who could have imagined it?
And it wasn’t as though the biggies at Solyndra didn’t know what was what:
It entered the market knowing full well that Chinese companies were already in the business and selling the same kinds of panels even more competitively.
And did Solyndra spend our money wisely?
Rather than spending its capital to become competitive, Solyndra spent its government cash on a glitzy, glassy headquarters built from scratch even as empty plants stood by. Hayward is near the Silicon Valley, the place where startups often begin in garages.
“The huge NUMMI plant was sitting there empty, so it was strange that this company was building such an elaborate headquarters so close to it,” a San Jose local told IBD on a visit last week to the area. (NUMMI, recall, was the much-ballyhooed GM-Toyota green-car project derailed by union costs last year.)
The Obama administration tried to (surprise!) blame Bush right up until this was shoved down their throats:
“By the time the Obama administration took office in late January 2009, the loan programs’ staff had already established a goal of, and timeline for, issuing the company a conditional loan guarantee commitment in March 2009,” said Jonathan Silver, who heads the Energy loan program.
Republicans pushed back hard against this version of events, unearthing internal Energy Department emails that indicate the panel evaluating the loans had made the unanimous decision to shelve Solyndra’s application two weeks before Obama took office.
A very old joke tells us of the accountant who informs his boss that they are losing $10 on every product they sell. The boss thinks for a minute, his eyes light up and he exclaims “No problem! We’ll make it up on volume!”
There simply is no overstating the stupidity of democrats.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.