Friday, September 23, 2011

Crony Capitalism


The Barry is sagging under the weight of two crony capitalism disclosures -- Solyndra Corp. (see: Reuters Article) and LightSquared (see: LightSquared).  Now we hear that Jeff Immelt, the CEO of General Electric and a clear Obama crony, has just been thrown a $230 million bone from OGX, the Brazilian oil company, to supply them with off-shore drilling technology (see: Surprise GE Contract).  Now, clearly coincidentally, when Obama was in Brazil earlier this year, he announced a $2 billion U.S. loan to help Brazil develop its huge off-shore oil discovery (see: Forbes Take on the Loan ) ... despite the fact that he has effectively stopped oil exploration off our own shores.  He punctuated this largess by another of his arm-waving grand gestures ... saying that the United States is looking forward to importing this new Brazilian oil (see: Drill Brazil Drill).

Is anyone surprised that Obama will raise $1 billion to fund his re-election campaign?

Long afterthought:  Here is another link to a listing of Green Energy pork: Michelle Malkin

2 comments:

Axel Grabowsky said...

While I surely agree that Obama is running hard for re-election and is sparing no cost to snatch the prize, I'm not sure I'd call that crony capitalism. As far as I know there are no personal relationships between Obama and either Solyndra or Light Squared nor do I think Immelt is "a clear Obama crony." In the case of the two companies, I think Obama pushed in his usual naive, business-ignorant manner for alternate energy. As far as Immelt goes, I heard him speak several times before alumni audiences in Hanover and I got anything but the impression that he felt he was a crony of the president.

Anonymous said...

As far as crony connections to LightSpeed and Solyndra are concerned, please read the links provided. And for Jeff Immelt see http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/ge-ceo-jeffrey-immelt-the-head-of-obamas-jobs-council-is-moving-jobs-and-economic-infrastructure-to-china-at-a-blistering-pace

GWP