05-10-2013, 02:13 PM
WASHINGTON (AP) â A Michigan company that received a $50 million federal loan to make vans for the disabled has stopped production and laid off its 100 workers.
Vehicle Production Group, or VPG, suspended operations in February after its finances dipped below a minimum level required as a condition of the federal loan.
The Allen Park, Mich., company received the loan in 2011 under the same clean-energy program that provided a $529 million loan to electric car maker Fisker Automotive Inc. Fisker had received $192 million before a series of problems led U.S. officials to freeze the loan in 2011. The Obama administration seized $21 million from Fisker after the company laid off three-fourths of its workers last month.
How many of these outfits are we going have to pay for. Of course it has nothing to do with politics:biglmao:
John Walsh, VPG's former chief executive officer, said Thursday that the company was a victim of poor timing.
"Sales took a little bit longer to get going" than expected, he said. "Cash got depleted."
Walsh, who now works for a bus manufacturer, said the DOE loan was a small piece of the $400 million VPG raised, mostly through private investors like Washington-based Perseus LLC.
Perseus Vice Chairman James Johnson is a major fundraiser for President Barack Obama, and he briefly headed Obama's vice presidential selection committee in 2008. A DOE spokesman said in 2011 that Johnson, a former CEO of housing mortgage giant Fannie Mae, played no role in persuading the Energy Department to award the loan to VPG.
Vehicle Production Group, or VPG, suspended operations in February after its finances dipped below a minimum level required as a condition of the federal loan.
The Allen Park, Mich., company received the loan in 2011 under the same clean-energy program that provided a $529 million loan to electric car maker Fisker Automotive Inc. Fisker had received $192 million before a series of problems led U.S. officials to freeze the loan in 2011. The Obama administration seized $21 million from Fisker after the company laid off three-fourths of its workers last month.
How many of these outfits are we going have to pay for. Of course it has nothing to do with politics:biglmao:
John Walsh, VPG's former chief executive officer, said Thursday that the company was a victim of poor timing.
"Sales took a little bit longer to get going" than expected, he said. "Cash got depleted."
Walsh, who now works for a bus manufacturer, said the DOE loan was a small piece of the $400 million VPG raised, mostly through private investors like Washington-based Perseus LLC.
Perseus Vice Chairman James Johnson is a major fundraiser for President Barack Obama, and he briefly headed Obama's vice presidential selection committee in 2008. A DOE spokesman said in 2011 that Johnson, a former CEO of housing mortgage giant Fannie Mae, played no role in persuading the Energy Department to award the loan to VPG.