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Solyndra - The Obama connection
I wrote about the solar panel manufacturer Solyndra last week; "Government Investment Disaster in the Works" I highlighted all of the negatives that the company was facing.
It was pretty clear to me that that company was facing trouble. But I had no idea that they would file Chapter 11 the very next day. (Sometimes you just get lucky)
I also made note of some scuttlebutt that George Kaiser (Oklahoma oil billionaire) was involved with Solyndra. I have been looking for a confirmation of this. Kaiser is an important link in this story. He is also a very big fund-raiser for Obama. He is often referred to as a “Bundler”. In this case that means he encouraged/pushed others to put up money for the big O’s campaign.
The Tulsa World filed a story Re the Kaiser connection earlier today. (What better place to get the news than a home town paper). Quotes from the TW article:
The bankruptcy filing indicates that Argonaut Ventures, an investment arm of the Tulsa-based foundation, holds almost 39 percent of Solyndra's parent, 360 Solar Degree Holdings Inc.
Okay, so who is behind Argonaut Ventures?
In an emailed statement to the Tulsa World, a representative of the George Kaiser Family Foundation said the organization made the investment through Argonaut.
So the family foundation was the source of the money that got Solyndra going. But George Kaiser tried to distance himself from this very ugly story. A quote from a Kaiser “spokesperson”:
"George Kaiser is not an investor in Solyndra and did not participate in any discussions with the U.S. government regarding the loan".
Interesting that Kaiser is doing his level best to distance himself from the stink. But it does not work for me:
George Kaiser is chairman of BOK Financial Corp. and owner of Kaiser-Francis Oil Co. Argonaut is headed by Steve Mitchell, who also served on Solyndra's board of directors.
So Kaiser wants us to believe that the Family Foundation he runs invested some $300mm of the families “excess cash” and he did not really know about it. The guy who is running the family’s investments (Steve Mitchell) is also sitting on the board at Solyndra. And we are supposed to believe that George Kaiser was just a passive investor? Not a chance.
We have Mr. Kaiser on the record on this. Again, his words:
“George Kaiser did not participate in any discussions with the U.S. government regarding the loan".
He never spoke to Obama about this? Not even once? Not even when Obama went (twice) to the company’s manufacturing offices in Pa and CA? I don’t believe that denial.
There is one very slippery fact that I am wondering about. It has to do with subordination. This a legal issue on who gets paid first in a bankruptcy. In all cases the equity is last on the list. But that is not the situation with Solyndra/Kaiser. From Bloomberg:
In February, Solyndra and its lenders reorganized the company’s debts, putting the U.S. loan behind $69.3 million owed to other lenders, including an affiliate of Solyndra’s biggest shareholder, Argonaut Ventures.
This kind of stuff is not supposed to happen. The equity interest of the Kaiser family got a preference as to the right of repayment from Solyndra. Kaiser got in front of the line. He got in front of the US Government’s $528mm IOU from Solyndra. Kaiser got in front of the interests of the American taxpayer. There had to be some very serious arm-twisting going on in the background to achieve this feat.
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I’ve looked at the BK filings. The company is going to sell its assets in an effort to pay of all creditors. The question is who gets paid first and what are the liquidation proceeds.
Solyndra had lousy technology. There are tons of flat panel manufactures left standing. Whatever Solyndra has for sale is not going to be worth much. I’m guessing around 20 cents on the dollar from book. The company has listed $859mm of assets. By my calculation the cash value will be under $200mm.
There are employee claims that come first. Next in line come trade creditors. Then comes the senior unsecured debt owed to Argonaut. The lawyers (There are a ton of big shots already involved) will get their pound of flesh. That leaves next to nothing for Uncle Sam. The taxpayers are going to take it in the ear for $400-500 million.
This story will hound Obama. His campaign got big bucks from a guy who ended up costing the Feds a very big penny. This is a story that could drag Obama down. He either has to step up and explain how this could have happened or he can say nothing. He has to provide some clarity on the George Kaiser connection. If he chooses to keep mum on this mess he will have to face Congressional hearings for the next 18 months. There will be a story in the paper every week or so. The Republicans will see to it. This is a story that could turn an election.
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Solyndgate?
Solargate? Kaisergate? Bundlergate?
I like Solargate. You may have coined a new expression. Not so many do that.
excuse me, mr. krasting.
i think you're forgetting the KING of new expressions...the one and only Janus.
{even though janus steals everything he's got from books that no one has read in centuries doesn't take anything away from him...great artists STEAL, mr. krasting -- janus just doesn't waste his time with thrifts and savings and loans. janus steals from the TITANS of yore -- the bankers that hold the EVERLASTING GOLD -- deep in cavernous vaults}
so, i'll excuse your oversight -- but just this once.
yours,
the ZHealot of ZHanadu
Looks like we gotta theme song too!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phgxhqAH_OY&feature=player_detailpage
now dat's a silver bullet, DV.
The real story is the collateral Solyndra used to secure the federal assistance. The Kaiser connection is to start the wingnuts barking and to divert attention.
Excellent Call. This is gonna get downright fugly for Obummer!!
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/09/business/solar-company-is-searched-by-fbi.html?_r=1&hp
“The F.B.I. is here. We don’t know the specifics,” said David Miller, a Solyndra spokesman. “It is in connection with the loan guarantee, but other than that we don’t know.”
You must be talking about campaign contributions to 0bama
No. Intelletcual property.
Ahhh, very interesting. That certainly merits more investigation if the IP in question is actually complete BS, which would not surprise me a bit.
Slightly OT:
Curiously, IP valuations have become a uniquely complicated science. Been reading a lot about that topic recently. The gist being that so much of a companies valuation these days depends on IP which is mostly held off balance sheet unless it was bought like through M&A. I find this intriguing from a value stockpicking perspective (I know, I know). Lemme find the link.....
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_34/b3796624.htm
I think Trav is a guru on this stuff
NEPI (a Kaiser Foundation gkff.org initiative) http://nepinstitute.org/about/board-of-directors/
and from the NEPI site (in a footnote)
and this page from the DOE (that has been removed) http://energy.gov/news2009/7078.htm but referred to from this other site http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/news/news_detail.cfm/news_id=15465>
Nice work, Bruce!
to all the conservatives at this site who hate govt corruption, why aren't you guys rallying around Buddy Romer....unlike Ron Paul he actually talks about the evils of money in politics and looks for solutions that are not heavy on outright limits, like full disclosure. He also talks about outsourcing of jobs.
Nobody named Buddy will ever become president no matter how superior he is to his opponent. The American people are too shallow and vote based on looks, speaking ability, and campaign slogans.
Besides, what is the point of getting behind someone who has a 0% chance of winning at this stage in the race? At least Ron Paul has a very slight chance of winning. Very few have even heard of Buddy. An unknnown like Buddy needed to get in the race a couple of years ago to become known.
Getting behind someone like this does a lot of good, if no one else mentions corruption and outsourcing of jobs, and he does and he suddenly gets 10 or 15 percent of Republicans in polls, believe me, people will notice and politicians will react.
Corruption is a huge problem, short of those feeding at the trought, the rest of us right, left, lib, populist etc agree on this...the more we give attention to such folks, the more it changes politics.
If you just give up, we are will surely lose. I am not naive about the forces arrayed against regular folks in US but that does not mean there is no hope for bettering things, that we should quit all participation in politics.
I like Buddy Romer and will support him even though I know he doesnt stand a chance in the big circus. He's been talking about taking money out of politics since the 80's and got run out of LA politics by big-oil for doing so. Big-oil was happy to turn Louisianna into a complete shitshow by ousting him in favor of a KKK grand Wizard and the most corrupt Louisianna politician in modern history. (Edwin Edwards who I think is still serving a 20 year bid in club fed.) All we can hope for out of him is some recognition by the masses about how dirty our political system really is.
I think I just blew my own mind pondering the statement of the most corrupt Louisiana politicians. I'd love to see statistics for how many states have a former governor currently incarcerated in club fed. I know AL's got one too, and I think illinois will take the cake as far as most former governors currently incarcerated.
A civil war is the worst thing that could happen. It's also probably the only way to clean up the system. The idiots pushing race war forget that they are a minority and a small one at that. Hopefully only a few will take the bait and try to cause trouble during the elections or after. Once enough of the sleaze and corruption in this administration is exposed and the BS of the media pushed Republican "front runners" fails to fool enough people, they will finally give Ron Paul a fair listen. A little common sense talk can go a long way and the MSM can't ignore him forever.
Just start yankin' broadcast licenses. Tell the cocksuckers "get a real job. it really wasn't good for me either."
I wouldn't worry about the other side outnumbering the other. A long time ago in high school I was at a Lazer Tag place and a whole bunch of blacks came in and sat on one side. They wouldn't let a white guy sit on thier side. Eventually there were 15 blacks and 10 whites. he employees came in and looked at the seats and stepped back in shock. They said, are you guys ok with this? The blacks said yeah we gonna kill the honkeys. So we had our mock race war.
Whites won 5000 to -250. The blacks actually shot themselves more than the whites. In the real race war it will be the same.
Laser storm had me, a 9 year old boy and his 8 year old sister up in Denver as green team against 12 mix races all swearing they will mop up the floor with us three.
Minutes into the killing we were ahead 400 to 15 and absolute silence and concentration on our three and yelling, confusion and anger on the other side.
I managed to infilterate far enough to the first shield, flanked and killed all 12 in a row. The first thing I heard was "Let's get that little shit" and had blood lust in the voice.
I dropped my weapons, used my black clothing to stay in a very dark spot as they vaulted over the wall. I managed to escape the mall with two in chase.
A short time with my Ka bar took care of one and the other fled.
The one who wanted to "Get the little shit (Aka me...)" took the game way too personal.
Last I heard the two remaining children using thier pure eyes and fast reflexes held off the enemy team for the rest of the game without me.
I was to never find out what happened to the one who was as a crab does trying to contain the agony. Incredibly he was even more angry at the damage I did to him defending myself. A destroyed hip joint usually disables an opponet.
The old proton gear and helmet was sufficiently protective when you ran at full speed down the back hall and collided with either a teammate or enemy player. Thinking back on those days decades ago, they built those electronics bullet proof. You shook off the pain and keep playing.
My aging heart hurts now when i think back to those days where the lust for violence and victory screamed in your blood like lava and you ran top speed 100% killing those who were slower and more obese than you.
It was always the wee ones who were around 8 or so with the best eyesight and the most killing butcher in the dark arena. We were old at 16 or whatever.
Do the lazertag guns work when held sideways?
Only if you have these...
http://www.ugoto.com/picture_homie-sights.html
When push comes to shove, the urban blacks and latinos will do a heavy number on each other, then the survivors - real stone killers - will turn on their former masters, the urban white cosmic libs and Jews. When the dust settles, HardRights, militias will then go into what's left of the cities and mop up the mess. I'd guesstimate about 1/3 to 1/2 of the sheeple in this country aren't going to be breathing a whole lot longer.
goddamit, son! turn down that fuckin bold -- makes you easier to spot. you're gonna need to be hidin soon anyhow.
so, here's CP's speech -- full version.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBLvOl0gyA4&feature=related
here's where CP seeks vengence on janus (CP are you the latent homo, or the main man? or both?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouHkL7u9qLw
SWEET!!!
and, CP, here's what happens when i lose patience with you, and let one of my merry men loose on your 'vision' for the future:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYKqA0St8_U&NR=1
HELLA-SWEET!!!
now, CP, would you like me to compose another original song for you...like yesterday's.
keep a diggin, cp, and deeper still; keep a diggin, CP, till that soil starts to spill back in, cp, keep a diggin, cp, and deeper still -- dig deep-deep-deep, and deeper still (all from memory, kind a has a way of stickin with ya'...kinda catchy. wanna hear the second stanza? OH, btw, i stole the beat from an ole nigger spiritual -- but you wouldn't know a goddam thing about that, would ya?
Love,
yer nigger nightmare!
Nice work Bruce, make it stick.
Good one. Also the Center for Public Integrity deserves kudos for the early digging work that broke this story.
A vehicle that travels 12,000 miles a year at 25 mpg uses 480 gallons of gas a year.
So, the average Cash for Clunkers transaction will reduce gasoline consumption by 320 gallons per year.
The government claims 700,000 clunkers have been replaced so that's 224 million gallons saved per year.
That equates to a bit over 5 million barrels of oil.
5 million barrels is about 5 hours worth of US consumption.
More importantly, 5 million barrels of oil at $70 per barrel costs about $350 million dollars.
So, the government spent $3 billion of our tax dollars to save $350 million.
We spent $8.57 for every $1.00 we saved. [Unquote]
Not to mention the interest on the new debt incurred and additional insurance costs. I could go on but won't. I'm pretty sure Obama will do a better job with health care, though.
In a sick kind of way, I really like that math. It sounds about right.
Except that it was $2.8B, a car that gets 32/40mpg only uses 375/200 gallons ( so it's more like 300M/375M miles per year and $480M/600M), and people will probably keep driving the cars after the first year.
Don't believe everything you read on freerepublic.
Wow, only $2.8 billion instead of $3 billion. He was way off there.
Every car bought gets 32/40 mpg?
Tens of thousands of used cars that were running got destroyed instead of being resold to poor families.
The program didn't create any new demand. It simply stole from future sales, as those people would have eventually bought a new car once their "clunker" broke down or would be sold. It wouldn't have cost the taxpayers $3 billion
I don't believe some of the twists of logic I read on ZH
I kept mine out of the destruction. The auction house sales dropped from a thousand per day to a few hundred during that time period.
Now they say modern cars are being hacked.
Consider this. I drove a big rig and got 5 miles to the gallon in 1980. I still got the same 5 miles to the gallon in 2001 when adverse winds and other issues were against fuel economy.
Only that gallon of Desiel went from .90 to 4.35 a gallon and required very expensive low emissions electronic desiels to run well. The old air breathing desiels will always out pull them every time.
http://www.iwatchnews.org/2011/06/15/4880/obama-rewards-big-bundlers-job...
My hat's off to you Bruce! A really excellent bit of investigation that illustrates how government really works.
I hope it will gain the traction it deserves and not just be buried in a few back-page paragraphs in a few of the major newspapers because it doesn't support their pro-government line. I would advise ZH'ers to watch carefully how their favorite news sources deal with this information to get an idea of exactly where they stand. And to understand why ZH is so valuable and needed!
ZeroHedge is my favorite news source.
Kaiser's WH visitor log
http://opendata.socrata.com/Government/Sort/9hm5-btfi
Has Drudge trademarked CHICAGOLAND yet?
Chicago Tribune has a section called Chicagoland. That predates Drudge.
Excellent work Bruce. You have been all over this Solyndra thing like white on rice. I suspect this story will make MSM or at least WSJ.
Edit: And yes this stinks to high heaven of crony bailout capitalism. It is disgusting and neither party offers any reasonable alternative. Sickening.
.gov new motto: We decide who gets the pony.
I hear Obama is launching a new campaign contribution rewards program.
Even Bushco wasn't corrupt and arrogant enough to bail out their friends at Enron with taxpayer money.
You are kidding, no? Cheney and the Bush dominated FERC refused to intervene when Enron's price manipulation of the California energy market forced Californians into long term contracts at many multiples of ordinary rates. Years later I am still paying over $40 a month more for the same electricity that Nevada receives from the exact same sources. Multiply that time 35 million ratepayers and you'll get an idea of how much that one small bit of corruption cost taxpayers.
Did things for Halliburton, Bechtel, et al that make this look like tiddly winks though. That happened while Cheney remained a top shareholder and profited handsomely. They are all crooks, they have proven it time and time again.
Does anyone believe that the Government is good at, and even should be in the position to be, choosing "winners" and loosers in the economy through investments like this? Yet it continues with abandon at all levels of Government...fascist Government.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/downchart_gs.php?year=1900_2010&unit...
Several years ago, we reached the Alexis De Tocqueville event horizon, and now it is too late to turn around. Prepare for unforeseen consequences.
Plenty of people do. They voted for 0bama and some of them post on this board regularly
Yep watched that on the news. Joe Biden came to oklahoma to talk to the Money Pigs and promptly told them a whole bunch of shit just got cratered. Now our tax guy is on TV saying tax revenue was up 15 precent in august from oil and gas industry because so many people used so much electricity from the heat wave. Meanwhile PSO had a moratorim ban on disconnecting people till end of august for not paying bills.
They don't even try to make things add up any more.
Oh and CBS news put out a table with kentucky fried chicken for people to come eat with them on Labor day. Like people are going to burn 5 bucks worth of gas to go eat thier shitty fucking chicken.
And you are one generous person bruce. They charge about 200 buck to 300 bucks to ship a pallet of panels depending on where you live and my guess is they'll make about 400 bucks a pallet above shipping costs considering that there are those purple high voltage panels with large output drops over time but dirt cheap price per killowattt.
Sounds like someone is getting the Warren Buffet deal.
Why not?
Worked with GM screwing the bondholders, but insured union votes.
Administration favorites will always get preferential treatment.
It is the way things work, and no big fucking surprise.
Exactly. Once they upset decades worth of established contract and bankruptcy law in the GM steamroller, all bets were off. Anyone who contracts with the government (or with one of its favored stooges) deserves what it will get....nothing.
Actually, honest investors and taxpayers get screwed.
seems more than one blogger is on the case which is good
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/09/solyndra_insiders_get_a_seco...