Monday, October 31, 2011

Fox to perform audit of henhouse; Old McDonald eagerly awaits report; “This could…*burp*…take some time,” says the fox

The White House has ordered a review of Department of Energy’s subsidized loan transactions.

Meanwhile, another government-subsidized energy company goes bust.

Some key questions:

(1) What is the total size of the existing portfolio of DOE loan guarantees (and direct loans, if the agency makes any of those)?

(2) What is the current default rate?

(3) How does the DOE reserve for the guarantees (or does the agency reserve at all)?

(4) How many transactions (and in what aggregate dollar amount) are in the pipeline of prospective deals?

(5) How many transactions (and in what aggregate dollar amount) are currently being, or have been, renegotiated?

(6) What percentage of the DOE’s total portfolio consists of renewable energy transactions? What is the average age of the renewable energy portfolio?

(7) What credit standards are used to evaluate the likelihood of repayment? How many deals did not adhere to those standards? On what basis, and under whose authority, were departures from established credit standards permitted?

There you go, Mr. Fox! Start with those questions. Better get to it, though, before the whole portfolio goes *Poof!*, and you’re just stuck doing one humongous post mortem.

1 comment:

bruce said...

'What credit standards are used to evaluate the likelihood of repayment?'

Whoaaa! Hold on there. If it's stamped 'sustainable' or 'renewable', isn't that enough? Surely we should be glad to be saving the world as repayment, I mean call it a loan or whatever dude, so many rules, we got to stop tying ourselves down with semantics and all, you know?

wv (I kid you not): herods

What is Truth?