Obamateurism of the Day

Allahpundit already started off the fun with Barack Obama’s newest White House website, Money As You Grow, which dispenses sage advice … most of which Obama himself ignores when handling our money.  AP took two of the better entries in the series in his post last night, but there are plenty more to ridicule within this gold mine of sanctimonious hypocrisy.

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For today, let’s take a look at the very last piece of advice offered by the Obama administration to young adults.  No, it’s not where to find free condoms (in the cash register till, dummy), but on how to avoid bad investments:

Great advice!  Too bad Obama didn’t take this advice before blowing more than a half-billion dollars on Solyndra.  It’d be almost impossible for me to quote all of the posts we’ve written about Solyndra and the Obama White House’s insistence on subsidizing it despite warnings that it was a bad risk and couldn’t sell its products at a profit, but let’s just go to this one from October of last year, quoting e-mails that floated to the surface when the House Oversight Committee began to lean hard on the Obama administration:

The new documents show a private investor in Solyndra questioning why the federal government, back in September 2009, agreed to put up so much money — $535 million — to help the company expand given the questions about its financial future.

“One of our solar companies with revenues of less than $100 million (and not yet profitable) received a government loan of $580 million,” the investor, Brad Jones, an executive at Redpoint Ventures, wrote in December 2009 to Lawrence H. Summers, then the president’s chief economic advisor, referring to Solyndra. “While that is good for us, I can’t imagine it’s a good way for the government to use taxpayer money.”

“The allocation of spending to clean energy is haphazard; the government is just not well equipped to decide which companies should get the money and how much,” Mr. Jones wrote…

“I relate well to your view that gov is a crappy vc,” Mr. Summers wrote, using a shorthand for venture capitalist. “But suppose we think there are all kinds of externalities to renewable investments,” Mr. Summers continued. “What should we do?”

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I’d say the best advice to give any young investor is to ignore any advice on investing that comes from the Obama administration, at least if you’re playing with your own money.

We may have to come back to this website a time or two more.

Got an Obamateurism of the Day? If you see a foul-up by Barack Obama, e-mail it to me at [email protected] with the quote and the link to the Obamateurism. I’ll post the best Obamateurisms on a daily basis, depending on how many I receive. Include a link to your blog, and I’ll give some link love as well. And unlike Slate, I promise to end the feature when Barack Obama leaves office.

Illustrations by Chris Muir of Day by Day. Be sure to read the adventures of Sam, Zed, Damon, and Jan every day!

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