In 2009, Fisker received a $529 million federal loan from the Department of Energy’s ATVM program. According to the New York Times, two years after receiving the loans, the company repeatedly missed production targets and other deadlines. They’ve now fired 75 percent of their workforce and hired bankruptcy advisers. It has not built a car since July 2012. That lead the DOE to suspend their support, after having guaranteed $192 million of the $529 million loan. Like Solyndra, taxpayers will foot that bill, minus the $21 million that the government managed to seize from the company’s cash reserves.
At the time that the loan was made, I hailed it.
Forget a carbon tax. Forget cap and trade. Steven Chu is going straight to picking winners and losers.
Two months later, I was still ecstatic.
The American people are being forced to participate in a venture capital fling in which they take most of the down side and none of the up side. And it is not being debated. Nobody has to come before the public and explain themselves. If you call yourself a progressive, are you proud of this?
If there were any justice in the world Steven Chu would be occupying a cell with Bernie Madoff.
But he has a Nobel Prize! Why are you so anti-science?
Yeah, whoever would have thought that a Nobel Prize winner and physics professor would tend to make lousy business decisions? …a prime example of the difference between “smart” and “wise.”
You have to admit, seeing Steven Chu as simply a terrible investor who doesn’t recognize that there’s a reason that VCs set themselves up for a 10x return on a success is pretty much the most charitable view you can have.
The alternative conclusions are all much less charitable.