Corruption

Want to know how to spell crony as in crony capitalism?  Try C-H-R-Y-S-L-E-R.  See here.

While on the subject of corruption  this story about the Solyndra company tells us all the rest we need to know about any administration's ability to pick winners and commit taxpayer money to politically motivated decisions.  This is called crony-capitalism and never works because politically driven decisions, lacking the scrutiny of those who have their own skin in the game, are inherently flawed.  Capitalism works because those investing capital in companies scrupulously apply due diligence.  Rule number one for these investors is never completely trust the word or projection of those seeking your capital because they have a built-in bias for the investment.  The prudent investor conducts his own independent research and due diligence, looking for corroborating sources of information before making a commitment to invest.  Contrast this approach to that of the government representative Henry Waxman who was completely taken by surprise by the failure of Solyndra after being assured by the COO two months before the company filed for bankruptcy that its financial condition was excellent.  Clearly Henry Waxman was a lot less careful investing taxpayers money than he would have been his own largely because he was applying political criteria to the success of the investment.  Lesson?  Keep politicians and the government out of business of picking winners and losers in the marketplace.