An internal whitewash of Solyndra?

Keith Koffler:

The White House announced Friday that President Obama has appointed someone to look into this whole Solyndra matter. But don’t be too impressed.

Solyndra of course is the solar panel maker that took half a billion in federally guaranteed loans and proceeded to go belly up anyway, prompting a Congressional investigation into the incompetence of the loan steering process and whether Obama fundraisers who were involved had conflicts of interest.

 First, let’s take the opening line of theWashington Post articleabout the new investigation: “The White House has authorized an independent review . . .” 

Authorized an independent review? What does that mean? 

Second, Obama has chosen one of the inmates to investigate the asylum. While Herbert Allison Jr. appears to be widely respected and has worked for both Republicans and Democrats, he’s not exactly an independent outsider, having recently served as Obama’s Assistant Secretary of Treasury for Financial Stability, overseeing the financial system rescue effort.
He’s an insider. Not an outsider. 

And third, the “investigation” is tailored to assess the clean energy program itself – to gauge the health of the companies that have received funds and to find ways to spot problems in the future – not to probe the actions and conflicts of interest of those who divvied up the loan money.
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This is probably a defensive investigation and not one that would seek to uncover more wrong doing.  What they are doing is looking for conformation of their previous flawed judgment.   The problem is that these business just are not viable in the real world and giving them government money does not change that reality.

The problem is that the people making the decisions ignored the hard realities of clash flow and instead used a faith based approach.