Joe Biden and his Democrat allies have literally spent trillions of taxpayer dollars attempting to make their environmental extremist nightmare a reality.
Now yet another taxpayer-subsidized energy company is imploding despite billions in Biden handouts.
But this time that’s not even the bad part.
Yet another Solyndra
In February, the Biden Department of Energy (DOE) announced that it was loaning Li-Cycle, a battery recycling company, $375 million of taxpayer money to build a facility in Rochester, New York.
As a matter of fact, according to a Wall Street Journal report published in July, it was the Biden DOE’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) and its director, Jigar Shah, who actively sought out and pushed Li-Cycle to apply for the taxpayer-funded loan rather than paying to build their facility themselves.
The Journal reported that Shah met with Li-Cycle executives as early as September 2022 to push them to apply for the loan, and just five months later, in February, the loan was swiftly approved.
But of course, as has been the case with virtually every “green energy” company Democrat politicians and bureaucrats have unilaterally handpicked to pour hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of taxpayer dollars into – remember Obama’s Solyndra disaster? – Li-Cycle is a total dumpster fire.
Back on October 23, Li-Cycle announced that it was “pausing construction work on its Rochester Hub project, pending completion of a comprehensive review of the go-forward strategy for the project.”
Roughly two weeks later, the company released its third quarter earnings report, which showed that it lost a net total of $130.5 million in July, August, and September of this year alone and managed to generate just $4.5 million in revenue over that same time period.
According to Stock Analysis, the company has now racked up north of $350 million in total debt – and that doesn’t even include the $375 million Biden handout.
Regardless, the fact that the Biden regime wanted to flush $375 million in taxpayer money down the drain on a few-years-old company that has never produced any sort of profit, and is barely staying afloat on its own, is not even the bad part of this ordeal.
How is anyone this incompetent?
The ruling class elites, regardless of political affiliation, handing billions of taxpayer dollars to their preferred special interests is just another day that ends in the letter Y at this point in Washington, D.C.
According to a class-action lawsuit filed by investors in the battery recycling company just two days after its third quarter earnings report was released, months before the Biden regime pushed the company to secure the loan for their Rochester facility, Li-Cycle began defrauding investors about that very facility.
The Daily Caller reported that “investors are now accusing the firm of making false statements or withholding key information about the status of the Rochester facility starting as early as June 2022, months before the reported discussions about the loan or the announcement of conditional approval.”
Based on the revelations, many analysts are essentially proclaiming Li-Cycle a dead company walking.
“If they’re not bankrupt in six months, I’ll be surprised,” Brighton Securities Chairman George Conboy told the Rochester Business Journal on Tuesday. “No one in their right mind would loan them money.”
To make matters worse, the Wall Street Journal’s reporting on the September 2022 meeting Shah had with Li-Cycle CEO Ajay Kochhar revealed that the executive was hesitant to even apply for the loan, because he knew the company would have trouble paying the loan back.
But Shah – who, remember, is a government bureaucrat with no knowledge of the actual details of Li-Cycle’s company – assured Kochhar that the company would be making so much money over the next few years, they’d have no trouble paying back the loan, the Journal reported.
Not even Hollywood could dream up this level of bureaucratic incompetence if they tried.
All part of the ruling class’ plan
It is important to note, though, that per the website of the Biden Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, which Shah leads, the government agency is specifically charged with financing green energy investments with loans private market lenders would never issue.
That’s right, your tax dollars are being specifically used by the ruling class to fund multi-millionaire Wall Street investors’ ESG startups that are so unprofitable and financially incompetent that other private companies won’t touch them with a ten foot pole.
As far as Democrats are concerned, it’s working-class Americans responsibility to continue padding the bottom lines of theses companies – and the wallets of their millionaire investors – to prop up their “green energy” fantasies.
And even if the “green energy” companies are being run by Bernie Madoff wannabes, the Biden regime will still gladly back up a Brinks truck filled with your tax dollars to their front door.
24/7 Politics will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.
