Solyndra
Solyndra.com operates Solar Loans, an online payday and short-term loan matching platform that connects US borrowers with participating third-party lenders offering loans of $200 to $5,000. The service takes fully online applications and does not itself lend or make credit decisions, acting instead as a referral service for lenders in select US states.www.solyndra.com
36
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22
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Search complete. 36 mentions across 22 episodes found for "Solyndra".
Sep 15, 2026
Jimmy FaillaHOST
The merch people.
Rich ZeoliGUEST
But I think that whenever you hear, "We're all gonna die," and then there's a financial motive behind whatever it is, selling Solyndra solar panels, turbines, whatever it is, I mean, you'd be an idiot not to see this.
Rich ZeoliGUEST
But apparently people, I guess, don't see this.
Rich ZeoliGUEST
They...
Rick SmithHOST
And when the collapse happened, you know, Obama came in and gave out a bunch of guaranteed loans to get a green economy moving.
Rick SmithHOST
And we always hear about Solyndra.
Rick SmithHOST
You know, Solyndra got about a half a billion dollars and they went bust.
Rick SmithHOST
And we, the taxpayers, ate it.
Rick SmithHOST
And the right lost their ever-loving freaking minds.
David JenkinsGUEST
Yeah, it's literally the most boneheaded thing I have ever heard of anyone doing.
David JenkinsGUEST
I mean, seriously, think about it, okay? Folks on the political right went ballistic over Obama administration's Solyndra loan guarantees.
David JenkinsGUEST
Remember that? The company that went under?
Bob GattyHOST
That was
Jason CalacanisHOST
We did a series of energy loans,
Lon HarrisHOST
famously to Solyndra, if you remember that.
Jason CalacanisHOST
Failed company, I believe.
Jason CalacanisHOST
Fisker also failed.
Chas LicciardelloHOST
[laughs] Anyway, what the Office of Strategic Capital is about is about, as Jared correctly says there, it's about investing in technologies and resources and, and, a- and, uh, uh, exploiting them essentially.
Jared MondscheinGUEST
It is not what the Obama administration tried to do with, uh, Solyndra.
Chas LicciardelloHOST
Which was, which was to give them lots of money, and then take a hit in the polls.
Chas LicciardelloHOST
[laughs] And then so-
Mariana MazzucatoGUEST
...
Mariana MazzucatoGUEST
Solyndra.
Mariana MazzucatoGUEST
So can you explain that and explain what it is that you think should have happened with those two companies versus what did happen? You know, if we want to say government just do what neoclassical theory says, which, which is invest in the basic research side of things and then get out of the way, we would have never had Tesla.
Mariana MazzucatoGUEST
The US actually had a massive fiscal stimulus, an 800 billion fiscal stimulus under Obama.
Mariana MazzucatoGUEST
With the Secretary of Energy, they set up ARPA-E, like DARPA, but for energy, but they also started to give out all these guaranteed loans in a portfolio approach, so trying not to put all their eggs in one basket, to different companies that were in that kind of, you know, clean tech, renewable energy revolution because they wanted a green stimulus.
Mariana MazzucatoGUEST
Some companies got the loans, were companies like Solyndra, which ended up going bankrupt.
Mariana MazzucatoGUEST
They got 500, uh, million in a guaranteed loan.
Mariana MazzucatoGUEST
Tesla, very different company within the same kind of portfolio, got something like 465 million.
Mariana MazzucatoGUEST
But because the framing continued to be the wrong one, the deals... that we got were, again, parasitic.
Mariana MazzucatoGUEST
And the example I give in the book is the Tesla investment, right? So Tesla and Solyndra got the same
Amy GoodmanHOST
amount of money.
Amy GoodmanHOST
Explain the comparison.
Mariana MazzucatoGUEST
Okay, so they each got about $500 million in a guaranteed loan from the Department of Energy during that period, which was post-crisis, which, again, the U.S., unlike Europe, had a fiscal stimulus to spur growth.
Amy GoodmanHOST
And Solyndra is...
Mariana MazzucatoGUEST
And Solyndra is a solar company, was a solar company, that went bust.
Mariana MazzucatoGUEST
Tesla, everyone knows what it is.
Mariana MazzucatoGUEST
But because the framing continued to be the wrong one, the deals... that we got were, again, parasitic.
Mariana MazzucatoGUEST
And the example I give in the book is the Tesla investment, right? So Tesla and Solyndra got the same
Amy GoodmanHOST
amount of money.
Amy GoodmanHOST
Explain the comparison.
Mariana MazzucatoGUEST
Okay, so they each got about $500 million in a guaranteed loan from the Department of Energy during that period, which was post-crisis, which, again, the U.S., unlike Europe, had a fiscal stimulus to spur growth.
Amy GoodmanHOST
And Solyndra is...
Mariana MazzucatoGUEST
And Solyndra is a solar company, was a solar company, that went bust.
Mariana MazzucatoGUEST
Tesla, everyone knows what it is.
Vijay VaitheeswaranHOST
It's
Vanessa Z. ChanGUEST
Solyndra, right? We have the Solyndra
Vijay VaitheeswaranHOST
problem.
Vijay VaitheeswaranHOST
That's why.
Vanessa Z. ChanGUEST
But hang on a minute.
Vanessa Z. ChanGUEST
But the problem is this is where it goes to marketing.
Vanessa Z. ChanGUEST
Because on the same time we fund a Solyndra, we fund a Tesla.
Vijay VaitheeswaranHOST
Agreed.
Nic PoulosGUEST
I'm sure that, to be honest, like the many very, very smart allocators that are out there probably already think about it that way.
Nic PoulosGUEST
But yeah, I mean, I think at some point you'll probably see some of those categories go the way of you know, green tech in the Solyndra era.
Nic PoulosGUEST
And like, it just doesn't work.
Nic PoulosGUEST
It's too expensive.
12 more episodes mention Solyndra.
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