The magazine’s Michael Scherer spends too much time focusing on Chinese dominance “in the global race to develop new commercial energy technologies,” but at least his article on the Solyndra scandal does not completely avoid the relevant facts:
Solyndra’s federally funded venture–with a price tag of $527 million, or about $1.68 for every man, woman and child in America–was supposed to be the litmus test of the Administration’s ability to fund “good projects quickly,” according to a 2009 Energy Department e-mail. Instead, the company’s insolvency has become an opening for Republicans to hammer Obama’s economic policies as ineffective, overzealous and even corrupt: “crony capitalism at its worst,” as Republican Representative Paul Ryan recently charged.
But the story of Solyndra’s collapse is also about something more alarming than alleged political favoritism. It is a story of an American green-jobs agenda that is falling short of its grand promise; of a federal government ill equipped to address complex economic challenges. …
What Scherer does not mention is that the federal government is inherently “ill equipped” to address complex economic challenges. The complexity is best left to billions of private actors acting through the market process.
