First Solar

Part of the Inflation Reduction Act includes $369 billion for grants (free money) to increase domestic manufacturing capacity for wind turbines, solar panels, batteries and EV's. Follow the money by just looking at solar panels which are representative of the other products. The US imports 88% of its solar panels. As far as the solar panels built in the US these companies get their raw materials from China where the mining and processing of these materials is poisoning the ground water. This way the US keeps its water clean. In any event most of this money ends up in China. The biggest benefactor of the solar grant money is a company called First Solar which is owned by Tesla. Elon Musk has become rich off of the US government in many ways. Solar panels made overseas cost 75 cents per watt and those made in the USA cost 95 cents per watt. First Solar gets $700 million in tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act and then sells these to a financial company called Fiserv. They now have $700 million in cash. After that in one month the company stock increased from $200 per share to $300 per share. Since there are 100 million shares this makes the company worth $30 billion dollars. The total assets of the company total $10 billion. Over the past year, Patrick Buehler, First Solar Chief Product Officer, has sold a total of 8,619 shares and has not made any purchases of the company's stock. This recent transaction follows a trend observed over the past year, where there have been 29 insider sells and no insider buys at First Solar Inc. In case anyone is wondering why solar is so much more popular than nuclear here is a possible answer. It took me all of 30 minutes to research this material. Where are the news reporters the old muckrakers.