Ethanol Loan Risk

 You know…if it isn’t one thing, it’s the other. The first major obstacle confronting the whole bio-fuel industry was…does it work…is it compatible with modern cars.  Now more questions arise regarding red tape and loan guarantees. USDA loan guarantees for the development and construction of facilities producing advanced biofuels have attracted few takers so far. USDA Under Secretary for Rural Development Dallas Tonsager told a house ag sub-committee that only 2 awards, one for $80 million and the other for $25 million have been made under the bio-refinery assistance program. “Very few credit providers, even with loan guarantees, are willing to take much risk at all. We may need to seek additional broadening of our ability to take risk if we’re going to get some of these projects off the ground. Yeah I guess it’s risky to get involved with ethanol. The two plants in Idaho that worked perfectly well, one of which converted a lot of potato waste into bio-fuel, have stopped because of bankruptcy. But the Obama administration is lending billions to banks that pay big executives huge bonuses after they made stupid, risky real estate loans that were doomed to failure. This isn’t the America I grew up in. I sure hope things change.