A Friggin’ In The Riggin’ ? Treasury Officials: Never Saw A Loan Like Solyndra !

So, maybe it WAS planned “to fail” after all…

“…it appears that DOE violated “the plain letter of the law” in approving the restructuring.” …Which even “that” failed to save it !

October 14, 2011, 5:26PM ET text size: TT

Treasury officials: Never saw a loan like Solyndra

By MATTHEW DALY – WASHINGTON

Two senior Treasury officials said Friday that >> they had never seen a loan restructuring similar to an Energy Department loan to a failed solar panel maker.

>> The half-billion dollar loan to Solyndra Inc. >> was restructured earlier this year >> so that private investors moved ahead of taxpayers for repayment on part of the loan

Treasury officials Gary Grippo and Gary Burner told a House committee they had never seen that occur in a federal loan. Grippo is a deputy assistant treasury secretary and Burner is chief financial officer at the Federal Financing Bank, which made a $528 million loan to Solyndra in 2009.

The two Treasury officials >> stopped short of declaring the loan restructuring illegal,

“I can’t give you a legal interpretation on that, sir,” Burner told Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla.

Grippo, who oversees the financing bank, said it was not Treasury’s job to make legal interpretations. Instead, he said Treasury officials correctly raised questions about the deal in a series of emails and memos.

“Our role is to be as helpful as we can,” Grippo said.

The testimony by the Treasury officials came after a hearing on the Solyndra loan erupted in a partisan skirmish. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., called the hearing “a rigged proceeding” and a “kangaroo court.”

Solyndra, of Fremont, Calif., was the first renewable-energy company to receive a loan guarantee under a stimulus-law program to encourage green energy and was frequently touted by the Obama administration as a model. President Barack Obama visited the company’s headquarters last year, and Vice President Joe Biden spoke by satellite at a groundbreaking ceremony for a new manufacturing plant.

Since then, the company’s implosion and revelations that it received preferential treatment from federal officials have become an embarrassment for Obama and a focal point of GOP criticism of the president’s green energy policies.

Continues at: http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9QCAI2G0.htm

Read more at Trapped on an Insane Planet