Investing

Due diligence is the practice of reviewing as much background information as you can get before committing to an investment. It's common sense and good business. You check the financials. You check the credit reports. You check the business dealings and you look at the prospectus. When you've done all that you've got a good idea of how much risk is involved in the transaction.

So, would you dump a few million of your dollars into this operation:

"We have incurred significant net losses since our inception, including a net loss of $114.1 million in 2007, $232.1 million in 2008 and $119.8 million in the first nine months of fiscal 2009, and we had an accumulated deficit of $505 million at Oct. 3, 2009," the company said in a December 2009 filing to the SEC. "We expect to continue to incur significant operating and net losses and negative cash flow from operations for the foreseeable future."

Apparently the financial whiz-kids of the Messiah's administration saw an opportunity to make a killing there. But money is no object when it comes from the successful who aren't paying their fair share to maintain the Bamster's supporters. And it is important to get those solar panels produced to sell to the government (you know that is who the customer would be, don't you?) at higher prices than the Chinese product.

Solyndra is going to get a lot more press in coming days and we haven't yet begun to get details on LightSquared.