Solyndra LLC’s workers making solar-power panels in a California factory subsidized by U.S. taxpayers showed “the promise of clean energy isn’t just an article of faith,” President Barack Obama said on a visit to the company in May 2010.
Two months before Obama’s visit, accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP warned that Solyndra, the recipient of $535 million in federal loan guarantees, had financial troubles deep enough to “raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.”…
“We smelled a rat from the onset,” Representatives Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican and the committee chairman, and Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican and chairman of the investigation subpanel, said in a statement Aug. 31 when the company announced it had dismissed 1,100 employees and planned to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization.
