John Cordes

China's Solar Industry Outshines the U.S.

Very nice article. Central planning has it's benefits. However America's delusional hubris is truly getting in the way. "We have the best health care available in the world", "we are the most innovative country in the world", "reduce taxes and regulations and let business do what it does best". All self serving sentiments which by overuse become anachronistic continue to delude the public into believing in fairy tales. Sentiments which actually have morphed into a self serving propaganda ghost written by a lobbying firm paid to maintain the status quo and legislated advantages.

Like the car companies which preserved existing cafe standards to avoid real innovation costs through lobbying for the status quo to remain intact, the health insurance industry which fights harder for tort reform than ways to expand comprehensive covered health care, like pharmaceutical firms which fight harder to extend existing patents ad infinitum, as a means to preserve profits than on actual research, American firms have come to rely on the triumvirate of what passes for corporate innovation; lobbying, advertising and acquisition. It is not surprising then that the so called American financial innovation is to find ways to increase leverage beyond sanity by selling CDO's instead of financing it's country's own 21st century manufacturing.
Yes those pesky Chinese have all that foreign reserve and central planning, while all we have is greed and politicians, and what passes for innovation is off-shoring jobs and devising new tax loop holes, aided and abetted by the political class.

Sorry for the rant. Nice article though.

Senator Schumer Misses the Full Picture on A-Power's Joint Texas Wind Farm

Evergreen Solar just announced their move to China lock stock and barrel. How many subsidies for the Devon Plant?

America Is Creating Green Energy Jobs...in China

As boorish as it may sound, the Bush administration and a Republican Congress wasted eight years, refusing to pass the significant green energy subsidies for wind and solar. Hardly surprising when you consider their fealty to big oil. China has been overtly promoting polysilicon production, wind turbine production and domestic consumption of both for quite some time. They have used tax abatement, eased financing and subsidized utility costs. The Repbulicans dithered on this until 2008 when an anemic bill was finally passed at the end of the year. No surprises then. I have owned APWR for a year.