How Much Did You Get for Your Solyndra

Less green jobs, all of a sudden:

In the biggest green-tech flameout yet, Silicon Valley solar panel maker Solyndra shut its doors and laid off 1,100 workers Wednesday after raising more than $1 billion from investors and securing a half billion dollar federal loan guarantee to build a state-of-the-art robotic factory that opened less than a year ago.

In a statement, the Solyndra said it would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy while exploring a sale of the business or licensing its thin-film photovoltaic technology.

“Despite strong growth in the first half of 2011 and traction in North America with a number of orders for very large commercial rooftops, Solyndra could not achieve full-scale operations rapidly enough to compete in the near term with the resources of larger foreign manufacturers,” the company said. “This competitive challenge was exacerbated by a global oversupply of solar panels and a severe compression of prices that in part resulted from uncertainty in governmental incentive programs in Europe and the decline in credit markets that finance solar systems.”

There's a lot more to this story than I have time to discuss at the moment, but study the last paragraph carefully, especially the part about "uncertainty in government incentive programs in Europe." Our government funds a company that depends on the uncertain largesse of other governments. And it doesn't go well. Can we draw any conclusions from that fact pattern?