No one except we taxpayers put more chips on the table in Green Energy than GE. Jeffery Immelt is tight with Obama. GE banked on Obamacare and Gore to force taxpayers to pony up billions on bad ideas to make GE a fortune.
This week it was announced that GE is investing in deep -water exploration by paying $1.25 billion for the Wellstream Holdings, PLC, a UK corporation. In October GE bought Dresser, Inc. for $3 billion. Dresser is a Dallas based oil and gas equipment maker. As crude oil hits over $90 a barrel, and China announces they will sell more new cars than the US for the second year in a row, is GE coming back to earth?
Coinciding with the GE announcement is a Wall Street Journal article stating money managers are bailing on wind and solar investments. First Solar is an example. The stock was $300 in mid-2008, now it’s $137. SunPower is at less than $14, down from $100. Vestas Wind Systems is less than $31, dropping from $100 in 2008.
What does all of this mean? From my perspective, since the late 70″s, whatever the US government is doing, do the opposite. In every instance throughout that period of time, Democrat or Republican, our government has been on the wrong side of every energy decision.
We stopped nuclear, the rest of the world kept going. We pushed ethanol, only Brazil kept going, and they are now doing off-shore drilling with a great future. Spain pushed wind, and broke the country. We are now pushing wind. We stopped off-shore drilling while many other countries stepped it up. We built no refineries while the rest of the world did. We don’t do tar sands and Canada does and now they save our bacon. We have frittered away billions almost trillions on DOE sponsored research with no results over this period.
In summary, it appears GE has a wake-up call. Following the US government’s energy strategy is a fool’s game. Get back on proven programs that get results, like off shore drilling. The money managers get it too. They are taking clients out of the loser investments that are dependent on the US government for success.
Isn’t it great to live in the wealthiest country in the world where your government can be wrong about energy strategy for over 30 years and we can still survive? How much longer can we be wrong? How much more money can we let whack jobs like Dr. Chu(DOE) pass out money to other whack jobs for useless research? How much longer do you want to watch China, Canada, and Brazil build for the future while we destroy the future? Your call, you keep buying the false promises.
