Me on KQED FM on Friday

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.