Private enterprise uses the word "billion" with a "b" far more than the governmental "trillion" with a "t".
But for a start up, a billion dollars is a lot of money.
A bankruptcy joke may be in the transmogrification process.
The gag used to be "how to make a small fortune? Start with a large fortune, and open a restaurant!"
Then it became, "...and start a dot-com!"; then it was "and invest in consumer real estate!"
The newest iteration seems to be "and build solar panels!"
And the newest poster child for that gag is Solyndra, which has announced that it will file a Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Case.
Solyndra is the third solar company to file a bankruptcy in August of this year, following Spectrawatt Inc. and Evergreen Solar Inc.
Now, there was a half a billion dollar loan guarantee made by the Federal Government on behalf of Solara, and there will probably be political fallout from this bankruptcy.
There will also be more bankruptcy cases, simply because 1,100 employees are now laid off, and that will give rise to more bankruptcy cases.
The City of Freemont, California will also feel a pinch, because stuff rolls downhill. A company that was spending a billion dollars was paying Freemont Restaurants, and there will also be more foreclosures and defaulted rental agreements in Freemont, because when the spigot is turned off with no warning, everybody in the vicinity is left holding the bag.
It appears that the bankruptcy was filed one step ahead of regulators, because the half-billion dollar Solara loan was the subject of a subpoena from the Energy and Commerce Committee.
There is now something that's been called "The Solara Effect", which is the reluctance of investors to jump into solar energy start-ups.
Because investors aren't dumb!
