Can't pay our bills, says battery maker A123, so lets all go to bankruptcy court.
You won't be invited, however, because of the distinction between a big creditor with a hot lawyer and a taxpaying chump who probably didn't even know about this particular rat hole.
A123 has been around for about 12 years as the brain child of a professor -cum-business tycoon with ties to China. It has always been a snacker at the public trough, so it isn't wholly a partisan issue,
But, Solyndra-like, it discovered joy of big-time slurping under the Obama administration. The president's DOE handed the company $249 million in 2009. Many more millions were sucked from from local and state tax spenders. (Routing note: The money passes from you to a bureaucrat to a company that doesn't quite know what the Hell it's doing besides scarfing up your personal wealth and having a ball with it.)
A123 promised to create smarter batteries, and possibly it did. But some of them didn't work and had to be recalled. More important, too few private investors believed the proposition was viable enough to risk their own money. Not a problem, mate. We'll just tell a nice green story to Uncle Barack and he'll tell Tim to tell Ben to print a few million more C-notes and give them to us.
We've seen so goddam much of this that it seems almost futile to restate the honest man's premise: If a proposed enterprise holds out a reasonable degree of success, the money to finance it will be available in the free market. If it's a sky-pie ploy to capitalize on politically fashionable adventures, only elected and appointed government officials can be gulled.
I'll bet you're not a bit surprised that the batteries that broke the company are for everyone's favorite cause, ta-da, electric cars.
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