"This cursory review makes clear that the Obama administration, and
especially the 2009 Stimulus Bill, gave hundreds of millions of dollars
in direct subsidies to domestic polysilicon producers. These subsidies
inevitably - and totally unsurprising - helped cause polysilicon prices to drop (and led to a Chinese investigation
of U.S. exports which targets the aforementioned tax subsidies and
several other state-level programs). Moreover, all the state and
federal subsidies to downstream solar manufacturers like Solyndra and to
US solar energy consumers further stoked US polysilicon investment and
production and further reduced prices.
And down goes Solyndra
So to recap: the Obama administration gave a $500 million dollar loan
guarantee to a company that was dependent on sky-high polysilicon
prices, but simultaneously threw hundreds of millions of dollars at
domestic polysilicon producers. The latter subsidies - when combined
with billions in indirect subsidies to solar producers and consumers -
inevitably helped stoke overcapacity in the domestic and global
polysilicon markets and a resulting collapse in polysilicon prices that -
wait for it - eviscerated Solyndra's business plan and ultimately
killed the company. And when Solyndra declared bankruptcy, the Obama
administration immediately blamed China. You cannot make this stuff up.".........................................................................................So, there it is, people. Subsidies in fact DID kill Solyndra. But they weren't so much Chinese subsidies as U.S. subsidies. Youza, huh? Talk about the left hand not knowing what the other hand is doing.
3 comments:
Too bad anti-libertarians who believe in the Koch Brothers conspiracy theories wouldn't even bother to read anything that Cato publishes, even when it's something important like this. That's a pretty dumb way of discrediting a source, rather the ideas presented. Don't you hate it when that happens?
I'm a huge Cato fan, Roberto. I consider them kind of a small l libertarian bunch that really looks at developing positive solutions (as opposed to the Mises Institute which I consider interesting but a little more doctrinaire) and hardly a partisan enterprise (Timothy Carney brags that he's never voted Republican).
Koch Brothers conspiracy theories?
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