{"id":11411,"date":"2011-09-23T15:54:50","date_gmt":"2011-09-23T19:54:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=11411"},"modified":"2011-09-23T16:57:45","modified_gmt":"2011-09-23T20:57:45","slug":"the-solyndra-moneyball-connection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/11411\/the-solyndra-moneyball-connection\/","title":{"rendered":"The Solyndra-Moneyball Connection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today marks the release of <a href=\"http:\/\/moneyball-movie.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Moneyball<\/em><\/a>, a movie based on a book based on the true story of how the Oakland Athletics baseball team overcame a chintzy payroll to compete with high-dollar teams.\u00a0 The book revolutionized the way many people think about baseball (and management in general) because of the A\u2019s innovative use of player\u2019s statistical data.<\/p>\n<p>Today also saw top executives from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/stories\/0911\/64268.html\" target=\"_blank\">Solyndra stonewalling Congress<\/a> over how the company went from $535 million in federal subsidies to bankruptcy in less than three years.<\/p>\n<p>Nine years after <em>Moneyball<\/em> was published \u2013 and eight years after Major League Baseball started testing for steroids \u2013 the A\u2019s success tapered off in relation to falling production of steroid using players like Jason Giambi, Miguel Tejada, and others.\u00a0 (<em>National Review<\/em>\u2019s Neil Minkoff has the details <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/right-field\/277958\/steroid-testing-and-death-moneyball-neil-minkoff\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>So, despite the A\u2019s perceived use of a superior technology, it looks more and more like they benefited from their proximity to the steroid capital of baseball: the San Francisco Bay Area (remember the Giants\u2019 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.people.com\/people\/article\/0,,20481678,00.html\" target=\"_blank\">Barry Bonds?<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>Something similar happened with Solyndra.\u00a0 When the company&#8217;s solar technology was new it looked like the magic bullet for the &#8220;green economy,&#8221; so much so that investors and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/09\/23\/us\/politics\/in-rush-to-assist-solyndra-united-states-missed-warning-signs.html?_r=1&amp;ref=politics\" target=\"_blank\">Obama Administration threw caution to the wind<\/a>, funded a fantasy, and put taxpayers on the hook for half a billion dollars.<\/p>\n<p>The A\u2019s only lost games and perhaps some credibility after their more-than-meets-the-eye initial success.\u00a0 American taxpayers are losing their collective shirt with bad bets on Keynesian stimulus and market-distorting subsidies.\u00a0 A\u2019s fans might want to get new management.\u00a0 Americans should demand it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today marks the release of Moneyball, a movie based on a book based on the true story of how the Oakland Athletics baseball team overcame a chintzy payroll to compete with high-dollar teams.\u00a0 The book revolutionized the way many people think about baseball (and management in general) because of the A\u2019s innovative use of player\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[143,351,3062,3043,3063],"class_list":["post-11411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-barack-obama","tag-corruption","tag-moneyball","tag-solyndra","tag-steriods"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11411"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11416,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11411\/revisions\/11416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}