Quote:

Yet Mitt Romney, an unusually financially sophisticated candidate, made the demise of Solyndra a central theme of his presidential campaign in 2012. Visiting the solar manufacturer's shuttered headquarters in California, he attacked the president on jobs, estimating "about half" the businesses the loan guarantee program had invested in had gone under.

The true number of failures at the time was only three out of several dozen—it has since crept up to four. As recently as Tuesday, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, the vice chair of the House Energy Committee's oversight panel, was still declaring "most of these companies are bankrupt and are no longer in existence, and the taxpayer is left holding the bag."

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zappaisgod said:

Our tax dollars, kemosabe?  You got a 50 year old mouse who has actually paid them in your pocket?  If you don't think this medium would have evolved without tax money you're crazy.

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starfire_xes said:

YEEEEEE---HHHAAAAAAAAAWWWW!!!!  We've turned Ecstatic, we got him cheerleading for giving taxpayer money to big corporations.

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Mush4Brains said:

But that doesn't seem to be the case... Communism... with $780mn of losses, and $810mn in interest collected... the communist socialist Federal government is $30mn in the black.

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Quote:

The Department of Energy, which gave us debacles like the Solyndra and Abound Solar bankruptcies, has put out a report claiming that its green-energy loan programs are turning a profit for taxpayers — a $5 billion profit, in fact. This claim was credulously reported by Bloomberg Businessweek, but don’t pop the champagne yet: Tax Policy Center president and former acting CBO director Donald Marron takes apart this claim. The government’s “profit” calculations don’t even take into account the major expenses:

Quote:

DOE’s report does not address this issue, except in a footnote in a table (cut and pasted above) revealing that its $810 million of “interest earned” was “calculated without respect to Treasury’s borrowing cost.” In other words, DOE reports gross interest received, not the net interest taxpayers have earned after subtracting Treasury borrowing costs. The incomplete figures in the table seem to suggest that DOE has eked out a $30 million profit on its lending ($810 million in interest less $780 million in loan losses). But when we account for Treasury borrowing costs, taxpayers are actually well behind.

The report does not allow us to say just how far behind. We do know, however, that DOE loans are typically made at small, sometimes zero, spreads above Treasury rates. So a large portion of DOE’s “interest earned” must have been offset by borrowing costs. That puts taxpayer losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The same concern applies to DOE’s statement that interest payments on these loans will eventually top $5 billion.

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Taxpayers aren’t making money off these government loan guarantees, period.

And that’s even before we consider that a lot of projected government “profits” are often the result of an accounting illusion. As I mentioned before, unlike private companies, the government ignores the market risks of loans, making it look as if the agency is turning a profit when, in fact, it isn’t. The CBO issued a report on this issue here, I wrote about it here, and Marron has a paper on this here.

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Quote:

Up-to-the-minute conservative commentary on politics, news, and culture.

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Phred said:

Not even close:

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its $810 million of “interest earned” was “calculated without respect to Treasury’s borrowing cost".... when we account for Treasury borrowing costs, taxpayers are actually well behind."

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Phred

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Borrowing costs? 

Since when do we add "borrowing costs" to any Government project?  If we buy a $350 million F-22 fighter jet, do we add "borrowing costs"??? 

Falcon91Wolvrn03 said:

Since when do we add "borrowing costs" to any Government project? 

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Mush4Brains said:

You can respond to posts, but you can respond to Private Messages?

Interesting.

But back to the crediblity of your info, the National Review Online.

Quote:

Up-to-the-minute conservative commentary on politics, news, and culture.

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No bias there.  Good thing there are no moderators here who post Up-to-the-minute liberal commentary on politics, news, and culture.

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Falcon91Wolvrn03 said:

Whether that's true or not, it's irrelevant. 

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zappaisgod said:

Mush4Brains said:

You can respond to posts, but you can respond to Private Messages?

Interesting.

But back to the crediblity of your info, the National Review Online.

Quote:

Up-to-the-minute conservative commentary on politics, news, and culture.

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No bias there.  Good thing there are no moderators here who post Up-to-the-minute liberal commentary on politics, news, and culture.

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Why would we need moderators to do that when there is a plethora of moonbat members ready, willing and able to provide that service?

It is no secret that the National Review has a conservative viewpoint.  Which is fine.  What the NY Times pretends to be is fraud.

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