Solyndra’s $733M Plant Had Robots, Spa Showers

'The glass-and-metal building that Solyndra LLC began erecting alongside Interstate 880 in Fremont, California, in September 2009 was something the Silicon Valley area hadn’t seen in years: a new factory.
It wasn’t just any factory. When it was completed at an estimated cost of $733 million, including proceeds from a $535 million U.S. loan guarantee, it covered 300,000 square feet, the equivalent of five football fields. It had robots that whistled Disney tunes, spa-like showers with liquid-crystal displays of the water temperature, and glass-walled conference rooms.
“The new building is like the Taj Mahal,” John Pierce, 54, a San Jose resident who worked as a facilities manager at Solyndra, said in an interview.
The building, designed to make far more solar panels than Solyndra got orders for, is now shuttered, and U.S. taxpayers may be stuck with it. Solyndra filed for bankruptcy protection on Sept. 6, leaving in its wake investigations by Congress and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a Republican-fueled political embarrassment for the Obama administration, which issued the loan guarantee. About 1,100 workers lost their jobs.'

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...n-plant-had-whistling-robots-spa-showers.html

 

Anyone who thinks the government giving money and loans to businesses is a good idea just does not understand free enterprise...imo.


And save the GM talk please.

GM got back on their feet because the economy turned around...not because their products changed.

You cannot design and bring brand new cars/trucks to market in a year...it takes years.

It the government had let it die, it's profitable models/divisions would have been bought up and it's crappy ones would have died.

And it would not have cost taxpayers one dime.

And despite what many think...it will cost taxpayers well over ten billion dollars in bailout money which GM was never supposed to pay back.


'Tax Payers Will Lose $14 Billion In Chrysler/Gm Bailout'

http://jroycroft.wordpress.com/2011/09/17/tax-payers-will-lose-14-billion-in-chryslergm-bailout/

 

I don't think putting thousands of tax paying workers on the street would have helped the government pay it's bills.

Hasn't GM paid back most of that loan? What's the problem?

 

The problem was that corporations go into bankruptcy often. And what usually happens is the parts that are good are bought up by others and the parts that stink die.

If GM had ended - those divisions that were profitable would have been bought up by others and continued to operate.

And just because GM went under, does not mean people that previously bought GM's would stop buying cars/trucks...they would just buy from other manufacturers.
And those manufacturers would need to increase production to meet that demand and which would be better?
Building brand new factories and hiring/training new workers OR buying up existing ex-GM plants and re-tooling them at a fraction of the cost and simply re-hiring the previous skilled workforce?
I would strongly suspect the latter.

It's simple supply and demand.

And it could have been done without costing the taxpayers a minimum of $14 billion dollars.



And btw - there were firm offers for the Pontiac and Saturn divisions from Americans to keep them going.
But the government-owned GM refused and let them die...along with the thousands of jobs they included.



PLUS, the government owning GM was - imo - a GIGANTIC conflict of interest.

The government bought up a company whose sales were directly affected by the health of the economy.

When the gov't. bought GM, it knew that it was going to pour (through itself and the Fed) trillions of dollars into the economy to pump it up...thus directly affect the sales of the company it was buying.

So they purchased GM with the inside information that they knew they were going to pump up the economy and greatly increase the value of GM.

It was not only a conflict or interest but also massive insider information...imo.

 

I don't know if that holds true in today's business environment. I just see manufacturing going away. Just look at how little in an American car is actually made here. Bearings - Japan. Tires - Korea. Dash boards - Brazil.

And I don't care about the federal deficit as much as I do about seeing people able to buy groceries. If the government needs to incur more debt to keep food on the table of American workers that what it should do.

 

But what is the point?

Too much debt leads to inflation. And then you will see the price of goods go up. The inflation rate has already tripled in a year in America:

http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/historical-inflation-rates/


Besides, huge government deficits are completely unsustainable.

Do you want to bankrupt the nation for your children/grandchildren? Just because people now were not willing to take the necessary steps to put things in order?

 

The point is that people have to eat every day.

Why is inflation going up? It's not because so many folks are spending money.

Could it be a lack of competition that allows price fixing? That's certainly the case with high gasoline prices in California.

We have a serious recession, possibly the prelude to another Great Depression. The private sector isn't spending. The fed gov is the only game in town. If the administration doesn't start spending more soon all but the very rich are going into poverty.

I don't see much value in worrying about the debt down the road when we may not ever get down the road.

 

Imo, one of the main reasons is that the Fed is raising the Monetary base - 'the total amount of currency in circulation and in central bank deposits'.



http://www.businessinsider.com/here...t-we-havent-seen-rampant-inflation-yet-2010-3


The more dollars you print, the less each dollar is worth (generally speaking).

So the more dollars it takes to buy things...especially things that come from overseas...like raw materials, finished goods, oil, etc..

Plus, eventually the Fed is going to have to raise rates if inflation keeps rising. And that makes payments on the debt much more expensive, so they take up a greater and greater part of the budget.
Right now rates are at record lows...but that cannot last forever.


And the amount of money the federal government brings in today was enough to pay ALL America's budget about 10 years ago. So it's not like balancing the budget should be THAT hard.

I agree those that cannot afford it should be given food and shelter and emergency medical care.

But just making up jobs that the country cannot afford just so people can keep their homes will - imo - lead to disaster.

It is simple common sense, when you are in debt - you cut back on unnecessary spending. You don't go and get another credit card and rack the debt up even higher.

The solution to too much debt is NEVER more debt.

 

He any relation to Sen. Mitch McConnell's wife Elaine Chu?

GOP’s Solyndra probe threatens to ensnare Energy Secretary Chu
9/29/11 : The controversy over a $535 million loan guarantee to the now-bankrupt California solar firm Solyndra is threatening to dim the star of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a physicist and Nobel Prize winner who had, until now, rarely been thrust into the political spotlight.

 

Which just goes to prove that Nobel Prize's often mean squat.

 

I agree. Private banks and investment houses don't make gigantic bad loans that can implode the entire world economy.

Good post!