They failed because they had an inferior product that was not competitive in the market with other manufacturer's or other power sources available. They should have had to invest more of their own money into making a competitive product people wanted but instead got a handout to produce the garbage only a government would consider buying.

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"I swear- by my life and my love of it- that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine"- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15. ~ Ronald Reagan

It's not about whether WE looked into that, it;'s about whether the people who authorized this outlay looked into the risk of failure that Solyndra carried. The causes of Solyndra's failure were not unexpected at all, in fact if you look at what happened, it was almost inevitable that Solyndra would fail. A product with little demand at the price point it requires is doomed and that's all Solyndra had. Anyone with two connected neurons could see that the Chinese could gut Solyndra like fish at the drop of a hat. Personally, I think that the Chinese were most likely licking their chops at this situation. Sitting there waiting adn knowing that they would be the ones lending us the money for this and then dropping the bottom out of the market and causing that money to be wasted. Not only did they harm our nation's economic stability, they got paid by us to do so. The situation was so incredibly obvious to see what was coming that to make this gift falls into the category of "Too stupid to be believed." The people who should have been authorizing this are people who should be some of the top economists in the country (if not the world) and I would expect that what I can see in hindsight, they should have had the foresight to see and know better.

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Our nation has not always lived up to its ideals, yet those ideals have never ceased to guide us. They expose our flaws, and lead us to mend them. We are the beneficiaries of the work of the generations before us and it is each generation's responsibility to continue that work. - Laura Bush

Leftists and very small children don't seem to be able to understand that the Government isn't there to "fix" the economy, anymore than a tick is there to fix your dog.~Oftencold

From what I understand China undercut the profit margins.

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Truth, Justice and the American way

...and the professional economists who should have been advising on this decision should have seen this coming a mile away. The chances of this happening are such that it was nearly an inevitability. THAT'S the issue I have with most of these outlays. They are being given with no consideration to what the results will be. Solyndra would have failed w/o this money and China's corps. knew that, so they weren't concerned about Solyndra cutting into thier markets. But once the gov't stepped in, they saw that there was a chance that the gov't's money would allow Solyndra to become competitive. Once they saw that, it was a natural reaction to chop Solyndra's feet out from under them. The kind of people that should have been advising on this decision are people who should have seen this coming. I don't know if they weren't of the caliber of economists that they should have been, if their advice was given and ignored, if they simply ignored this possibilty or any one of several other scenarios, but what I do know is that this decision should have had a very high level of analysis done beforehand and either the analysis or the response to the analysis were grossly flawed. Either way, someone should be fired over this.

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Our nation has not always lived up to its ideals, yet those ideals have never ceased to guide us. They expose our flaws, and lead us to mend them. We are the beneficiaries of the work of the generations before us and it is each generation's responsibility to continue that work. - Laura Bush

Leftists and very small children don't seem to be able to understand that the Government isn't there to "fix" the economy, anymore than a tick is there to fix your dog.~Oftencold

Do you see the line I bolded? Were you here when the entire economy damn near went into full meltdown? Where were all those professional economists alerting everyone to the coming crash? Where were those professional economists at Enron, AIG, Lehman Bros. on and on and on professional economists have gotten it wrong in the biggest companies in the world and you claim that everyone should have easily seen this one coming. Basically you are saying everyone involved in this situation from government to business were corrupt and in cahoots knowing it would fail. All these people in on some mass fraud. Ofcourse Obama is in for graft so I am sure he was behind it and has a bankroll somewhere.

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Truth, Justice and the American way

You obviously don't follow people like Peter Schiff who predicted the collapse LONG before it happened. But the issue isn't so much the experts, it's in the fact that there are experts who would have seen the collapse of these businesses and they either weren't in place or weren't listened to. Who's fault is that???

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Our nation has not always lived up to its ideals, yet those ideals have never ceased to guide us. They expose our flaws, and lead us to mend them. We are the beneficiaries of the work of the generations before us and it is each generation's responsibility to continue that work. - Laura Bush

Leftists and very small children don't seem to be able to understand that the Government isn't there to "fix" the economy, anymore than a tick is there to fix your dog.~Oftencold

It doesn't matter why Solyndra failed. Companies fail in a capitalist market. The important point is the OA acting as venture capitalist for a chosen company with our tax dollars. The Federal government ought not to try to pick winners and losers in the marketplace. You did know Solyndra had tried and failed to attract additional capital with an IPO before the OA bailed them out with our money.