As a service to the 10 people who will somehow manage to find the Bloomberg Television channel on their cable box tonight in order to watch the network's GOP presidential debate, Bloomberg News today published and the Washington Post syndicated a "Viewers' Guide to Economic Jargon."
While most of the article is helpful and unbiased, Bloomberg News seriously downplayed the scandalous nature of the ill-conceived Solyndra loan. Here's how Bloomberg defined the controversy surrounding the firm that was raided by the FBI in early September:
SOLYNDRA: The California solar panel company filed for bankruptcy protection on Sept. 6, two years after receiving a $535 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Energy Department.
Republicans have used Solyndra LLC to discredit Obama’s promotion of clean energy as a way to create jobs. Obama visited the Solyndra plant built with U.S. tax dollars in May 2010. By then, his own advisers and supporters outside the White House were warning the company was in trouble.
As numerous news agencies have reported, some Obama administration officials had concerns before the loan was even finalized.
Indeed, some Energy Department officials had warned that the loan might not be legal and that it should be cleared with the Justice Department.
What's more, despite all its troubles, it appears the Obama administration wanted to shovel millions more to Solyndra in a second loan as Carol Leonnig and Joe Stephens of the Washington Post reported last week:
Newly released e-mails show the Obama administration’s Energy Department was poised to give Solyndra a second taxpayer loan of $469 million last year, even as the company’s financial situation grew increasingly dire.
The department was still considering providing the second loan guarantee to the solar-panel manufacturer in April and May 2010, at a time when Solyndra’s auditors were already warning that the company was in danger of collapsing.
