That Solyndra got a government guaranteed loan is a scandal

Charles Gasparino:

The left wing media loves a good scandal, particularly one that somehow points out how allegedly greedy capitalists rip off taxpayers. If these capitalists are in any way connected to the Republican Party, like defense contractor Halliburton, it's feeding-frenzy time.

But if the scandal involves one of the liberal media's pet causes like "affordable housing" to the poor, scandals such as the widespread accounting fraud at the government mortgage lender Fannie Mae and the massive pay packages handed out to the agency's top executives are just not such a big deal. That is until Fannie imploded and taxpayers were stuck paying the bailout bills.

All of which brings us to the sad story of Solyndra, and how wasting more than $500 million of taxpayer money on a dubious technology isn't really much of a scandal, at least according to some of my colleagues in the financial press.

Solyndra is a company that was supposed to develop solar panels, and help the US compete with those financed and controlled by the Chinese government, which have cornered the market in these products. The reason it needed the government money was not just to better compete with the Chinese, but also to produce "green" energy and jobs for a Liberal's wet dream.

But the dream was deferred because the Chinese are better than we are at this business (which may not be much of a business in the first place), and Solyndra's business model made no sense -- it was trying to sell solar panels at prices well above the market rate.

...

There is much more.

Usually on a loan this size there is a cash flow analysis that projects some date in the future when the company will make a profit and start retiring its debt.  But one of the firm laws of accounting and math is that you are unlikely to be profitable if you are trying to sell a product above the market price unless you have some serious added value you can tout.  Congress should be asking for those cash flows, copies of which should be in the Energy Department's loan files on the deal.