Trying to Pick Winner, Feds give $535M to Loser

Mercury News: Fremont solar tech firm Solyndra to shut down, lay off hundreds of workers

Solyndra, a Fremont-based solar panel manufacturer that flared then sputtered, abruptly ceased operations on Wednesday and immediately laid off all 1,100 of its workers.

The shutdown marks a high-profile collapse of a company that received more than $1.6 billion in federal and private funding in recent years.

Even with $535 million of taxpayer money, Solyndra could not compete in the solar panel industry. Think about that. Then think about the interest you and will be paying on that "investment". Unreal.

Update: Corrected title and copy to reflect the $535 million figure that Zerohedge ran.

Paul Krugman Schooled on Ricardian Theory

Steve Landsburg takes Paul Krugman to the woodshed in: Panglossian Economics:

Notice that Krugman goes beyond implicit insistence that everything today is perfectly hunky-dory; he says that it makes no sense to believe otherwise. In other words, he’s really really sure of this. I await his salute to the Tea Party for its role in bringing us to this state of Nirvana.

The Tea Party: just a switch to beat Ricardian theory into the head of a Nobel laureate.

Will More Stimulus Spending Help?

Megan McArdle: Why didn’t the stimulus create more jobs?

This paper goes a long way toward explaining why fiscal stimulus usually doesn’t have such a great “bang for the buck.” It raises the question of whether as “twice as big” stimulus really would have been enough. Must it now be four times as big?

More often than not, fiscal stimulus seems to redirict taxpayer money to politically favored companies and constituencies. No where is that more evident than in the imploding "green jobs" business of solar energy.

Video: Ed Martin: Voting is not Enough

From the YouTube description of the video above:

Ed Martin, congressional candidate, speaks on state sovereignty, interposition, and voting - at Nullify Now! Kansas City on August 20, 2011.
http://edmartinforcongress.com/
http://www.nullifynow.com/
http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/
This is no time for just voting. Voting is not enough. But in both parties, we have too many leaders who think that's the answer.
We ought to have governors around the country who say NO!
Where are the representatives who will stand up and say NO. Not just vote no, that's not enough.
It's not enough to just run these folks out of office, although we should. We also have to win the argument.
The front line is going to be the question of how states are going to assert their sovereignty.
The question of state sovereignty and the question of how we'll fight back begins with the states. But, the most important thing to remember is this, the starting point is us.

Existing #Aerotropolis Warehouse Space is Sufficient so What's the $300 Million for?

Audrey Spalding of the Show-Me Institute: What's Wrong with Aerotropolis - What's the $300 Million for?

If two warehouses would satisfy the projected demand for exports, what's the $300 million in tax credits for? In this video, Show-Me Institute Policy Analyst Audrey Spalding discusses recently released documents from the Midwest China Hub Commission which contain expert findings suggesting that existing warehouse space around Lambert Airport would satisfy increased international air cargo demand.

I also learned that the Midwest China Commission opened their Beijing office in 2009. This passage from that press release looks interesting:

The Beijing office, which is housed in the building of London Export Corporation (LEC), will support the Commission's efforts in administrative and research functions. It is in close proximity to key government offices and will act as the direct liaison with Chinese officials.

LEC Managing Director Stephen Perry, also is chairman of the 48 Group Club, an independent business network committed to promoting positive relations with China.

I wonder if we will learn more about London Export Corporation and the 48 Group Club before or after the special session.

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• Greasing the St. Louis Democrat Machine with #Aerotropolis Dollars (rebootcongress.blogspot.com)
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Striking Workers Now Collecting Unemployment Benefits

IBTimes.tv: Verizon Strikers Boost U.S. Unemployment Claims:

The U.S. Department of Labor announced today that initial jobless claims in the US have risen to 417,000, far above the forecasted value of 405,000. That means more people filed for unemployment for the first time last week, than the week before… roughly 5,000 more. The high number disappointed many, but the data was skewed higher by an irregular event… claims by striking Verizon phone workers.

So the Federal Government is providing unemployment benefits to striking workers now!? Doesn't that increase the incentive to strike? Why is the government taking sides in labor actions like this? It's as if the feds support the strikers over their employers.

I remember the good ol' days when you had to actually be unemployed to collect unemployment.

Video: Roger Williams (R) is the Donkey Whisperer

Roger Williams is running for the House of Representatives in Texas's new 33rd district.

ZeroHedge Calls for Paul Krugman to be Fired

ZeroHedge: A (Hopefully Fake) Paul Krugman Laments The Lack Of Death And Destruction Following Today's Earthquake:

We truly can only hope that this Google Plus account of Paul Krugman is merely a well-orchestrated parody, because if it is indeed that of the self-styled uber-Keynesian, the time for the public outrage, his economic beliefs aside, has arrived. In a blast post on Google's immitation of twitter and facebook, which should immediately result in the termination of the Nobel prize winning economist if it was indeed penned by him, this particular account of "Paul Krugman" writes: "People on twitter might be joking, but in all seriousness, we would see a bigger boost in spending and hence economic growth if the earthquake had done more damage." Translation...well it's pretty obvious, but for those laboring under the aftermath of a full frontal lobotomy, the person who tweeted this essentially yearns for his voodoo economic religion to be validated following countless failures of Keynesianism (not, but really, after this injection of *illion dollars into the economy things will really be well), at the expense of death and destruction. Even more poignant translation: "Krugman" would like nothing than to put an equal sign between the death of a human being and the proportional GDP replacement value. What next: Krugman lamenting that only certain races end up getting killed in conflict, those whose replacement potential is too low, demanding more death? Or that X number of deaths would have been more stimulative if it was really XXX? This is about as close as we will get to a Keynesian admitting that reparations for death and destruction are the only two special clauses under which fiscal stimulus does work. Which of course means that with idiots such as the poster of the above who actually thinks this, be it Krugman or some of his countless voodoo brethren, and with their proximity to the president, the only logical explanation is that a war is coming, and is being welcomed by all these s[h|c]am "economists", for whom human death and suffering is a fair tradeoff in preserving their tenure or modestly-paid, liberal publication blogging job.If this indeed Krugman's account, it is imperative that the NYT immediately terminate this pathologically deranged psychopath.

"Krugman" apparently doesn't understand the Broken Window Fallacy. Here's a video (featuring Krugman, no less) that explains that fallacy:

Related articles

• Krugman: If only the earthquake had done more damage, the economy would have gotten a boost (hotair.com)
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The Success of Welfare Reform

Megan Mcardle: Did Welfare Reform Work?

Welfare enabled people to make bad long-term decisions that were rational short-term choices. Welfare reform changed that. That's good news.

Mcardle goes on to examine other ways in which welfare reform has been a success, so read the whole thing.

One Pig at the Trough Becomes CEO while American Taxpayers Struggle with Financial Serfdom

ZeroHedge: S&P Board Fires CEO For Telling The Truth, To Be Replaced With COO Of Citibank:

Following years of pandering to client demands, and assigning trillions of dollars in fixed income securities with whatever rating money bought (among other things, a factor to the credit bubble and its subsequent implosion) S&P finally tried to do the right thing and tell the truth. However in this case it picked if not the worst, then certainly the most hypocriticial credit in the world to expose - the US itself. Sure enough two weeks after the downgrade, someone made the phone call and the CEO Deven Sharma is no more. As for the kick square in the gonads: Sherma will be replaced with the COO of...you know it... the bank which demanded tens of billions in secret Fed bailout loans itself, Citibank, and whose existence is inextricably tied to America not seeing any more downgrades ever again.
As the FT reports, "The McGraw-Hill board made the decision to replace Mr Sharma at a meeting on Monday, where it also discussed an ongoing strategic review." Alas, this is nothing but a case study of modern corporate reality in America: if you are not with the status quo, you are against it, and you are promptly booted out of it: anyone who does not share the visions of one glorious future built on ponzi schemes, houses of cards, and games of three card monte, will be promptly suicided, either physically or professionally.

For those of you wondering what qualifies the COO of Citibank to take the reigns at S&P, let me remind you that Citibank is a subsidiary of Citigroup which is part of the Wall Street Aristocracy. They were in the news the other day:

Citigroup Inc. (C) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) were the reigning champions of finance in 2006 as home prices peaked, leading the 10 biggest U.S. banks and brokerage firms to their best year ever with $104 billion of profits.
...
The largest borrower, Morgan Stanley (MS), got as much as $107.3 billion, while Citigroup took $99.5 billion and Bank of America $91.4 billion, according to a Bloomberg News compilation of data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, months of litigation and an act of Congress.

It's fascinating to me that despite the fact that the US Constitution's forbids titles of nobility, we seemed to have acquired a parasitic aristocracy that lives largely at the expense of serfs they keep at bay with an oppressive tax system. For more information about the chart above, see this post from Greg Mankiw.

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