I’ll be on KQED-FM (San Francisco) on Friday, September 2 sometime between 9:00 and 10:00 a.m. (PDT).
The topic? Solyndra, the welfare-receiving corporation that suspended operations yesterday and plans to declare bankruptcy.
UPDATE: Well, when it came to policy, it was three against one. But I think I did well. You can hear it here.
Sep 2 2011
Bryan Caplan has already blogged about the debate between Paul Krugman and Steve Landsburg. I have nothing to add to the substantive issue debated. But I do have four things to add: 1. Notice that Krugman, in a later post, to his credit, admits Landsburg's point. 2. Notice also that Landsburg graciously accepts Kru...
Sep 2 2011
The share prices of AT&T and T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom AG fell sharply, while shares of No. 3 cellphone company Sprint Nextel Corp., seen as the biggest loser if the proposed merger goes through, were up nearly 6%. This is from Thomas Catan and Spencer E. Ante, "U.S. Sues to Stop AT&T Deal," Wall Street ...
Sep 1 2011
I'll be on KQED-FM (San Francisco) on Friday, September 2 sometime between 9:00 and 10:00 a.m. (PDT). The topic? Solyndra, the welfare-receiving corporation that suspended operations yesterday and plans to declare bankruptcy. UPDATE: Well, when it came to policy, it was three against one. But I think I did well. ...
READER COMMENTS
PrometheeFeu
Sep 2 2011 at 1:47pm
I listened to the beginning (will catch it later. Forum is usually a good show) and I couldn’t quite decide whether it was you or not largely because I assume anyone from EconLog is going to be introduced as “a libertarian”.
I think the Solyndra story is really simple. They made technology which turned out not to be profitable because of dynamic costs so they went under and if some day changing costs makes their tech profitable someone will build it. The interesting twist is that they were subsidized by the government most likely because it was sexy. As a result, investors probably didn’t look quite as hard at the company and in the end hundreds of millions were flushed down the drain. Sure, some of that capacity would not have been used (Many of their workers would probably not have had jobs) but some of the capital stock that they used could have gone to more productive uses.
Am I saying that the government should have known not to give this money to Solyndra? Of course not. But then they should not have claimed to know that money should go to Solyndra.
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