“…A $400 billion pile of cash dwarfing most private green investment vehicles…
…Mr. Shah isn’t a household name—unless your household includes lobbyists, financiers or crony capitalists. Those are the clients of Mr. Shah’s fief, the revived Energy Department Loan Programs Office. Last humiliated a decade ago, it’s part of that crack DOE bureaucracy that bet on such green tech ventures as Abound (the failed solar company), Fisker Automotive (the failed electric-car maker) and A123 (the failed battery maker). “This announcement today” is about “investing in the infrastructure and technology of the future,” crowed Vice President Biden in 2009, unveiling a $535 million DOE loan for a solar outfit he promised would power 500,000 homes and create 1,000 jobs. That outfit was Solyndra.
As if to prove that anything Mr. Biden could botch 10 years ago he can botch bigger and better now, the loan office is back, baby. Americans gasped at the audacity of Barack Obama’s $814 billion stimulus bill in 2009—and of gambling some $80 billion on clean energy—but that’s peanuts. The Biden spending rampage has bestowed on Mr. Shah, director of the loan department, a stunning $400 billion to hand out to green companies too risky for traditional lenders, or too politically powerful to turn down. According to a July Journal story, the “pile of cash is at least 20 times as big as most private green-energy funds.”…”
