dstraito
TB Fanatic
I just started reading the book by Stieg Larsson - The Girl with the DragonTattoo. I'll reserve the book critique until I finish it.
What I wanted to point out is this event that jumped out at me with parallels to current times.
The book describes companies moving to fill in the gap in infrastructurewhen the Berlin Wall fell. The economy was not doing well and bank liquiditywas low so they weren’t giving out loans. A Swedish company applied to aGovernment program giving grants to help rebuild this infrastructure. The bookdetails the scandal of the Company getting a large loan and building a factoryin Poland but alas, after three years (when the loan repayment was due), thecompany announced it couldn’t make a go of it and declared bankruptcy. Henceall the Taxpayer money funding this infrastructure government grant program waslost. Investigation revealed however, that a small fraction of the money loanedwas actually used for this program.
The company took the money, investedit, probably doubled their money on a zero interest loan, and then defaulted sothey didn’t have to pay it back. This Swedish company thrived while many othersfailed and it did so based on favoritism and fraud and the Tax Payers paid forthis. One important thing to note was a board reviewed the books kept by thiscompany and approved the actions taken so basically it wasn’t just the companyperpetuating the fraud, it was the board as well.
What struck me was the similarity to the current administration’s method ofoperation and favoritism and the correlations to Solyndra that obtained atax-payer funded load for $535 million and declared bankruptcy.
Did anyone else read this book and see the parallels to the type of problems in the current administration?
What I wanted to point out is this event that jumped out at me with parallels to current times.
The book describes companies moving to fill in the gap in infrastructurewhen the Berlin Wall fell. The economy was not doing well and bank liquiditywas low so they weren’t giving out loans. A Swedish company applied to aGovernment program giving grants to help rebuild this infrastructure. The bookdetails the scandal of the Company getting a large loan and building a factoryin Poland but alas, after three years (when the loan repayment was due), thecompany announced it couldn’t make a go of it and declared bankruptcy. Henceall the Taxpayer money funding this infrastructure government grant program waslost. Investigation revealed however, that a small fraction of the money loanedwas actually used for this program.
The company took the money, investedit, probably doubled their money on a zero interest loan, and then defaulted sothey didn’t have to pay it back. This Swedish company thrived while many othersfailed and it did so based on favoritism and fraud and the Tax Payers paid forthis. One important thing to note was a board reviewed the books kept by thiscompany and approved the actions taken so basically it wasn’t just the companyperpetuating the fraud, it was the board as well.
What struck me was the similarity to the current administration’s method ofoperation and favoritism and the correlations to Solyndra that obtained atax-payer funded load for $535 million and declared bankruptcy.
Did anyone else read this book and see the parallels to the type of problems in the current administration?