Punch line: The proper role for government is to support basic research, not commercial ventures
Excerpted from the WSJ: The Solyndra Economy
“Listening to the President, Solyndra was a necessary casualty in the greater campaign to steer the U.S. economy toward Mr. Obama’s noble goals.
Private competition that winnows out losers is so yesterday.
Brad Jones of Redpoint Ventures got to the heart of the Solyndra economy in a December 2009 email to then-National Economic Council director Larry Summers:
“The allocation of spending to clean energy is haphazard; the government is just not well equipped to decide which companies should get the money and how much . . . One of our solar companies with revenues of less than $100 million (and not yet profitable) received a government loan of $580 million; while that is good for us, I can’t imagine it’s a good way for the government to use taxpayer money.”
Which is precisely the point.
The proper role for government is to support basic research, not commercial ventures that become exercises in taxpayer risk but private reward.
When government takes $535 million and invests in a loser, it not only wastes taxpayer money but it also denies that capital to some other project in the private economy that might have succeeded.
The Solyndra emails show how ill-equipped government is to predict the industries of the present, much less the future.”
Why no Occupy Wall Street placards on this one ?
