Quote from maxpi:
Fiskar automotive has a good chance at success...
It may be true that their product / technology is unique, but is it a state's role to decide which direction the economy should go?
And clearly the government deiceds on direction here by granting a loan to a specific type of technology / business. It is no different than central planning in Communism.
What US government did in the case of Fiscar is: ''We the government decided that automobils are preferred over planes / rollercoster / teleportation / railway / other. We the goverment decided that electricity is preferred over gasoline / nuclear / hydro / whatever''.
Even the most enlightened governments make mistakes (see: Freddie and Mac). Any government decision to support a given technology / business type over the other leads sooner or later to a bubble because too much resources will devoted by investors to a certain government- preferred type of behaviour.
Let me give you one example: a few years ago EU gave incentives for solar panels producers. Many new business were created. Businesmen were allocating their funds into solar production because they were given financial incentives. If not for the financial incentives that may have very well invested in other new (maybe better) technologies. What happened this year?
A little state-created bubble bursted. We will have to close a majority of them as they are going bankrupt. Some investors lost money, some are happy because they manged to corner the state on grants. We will have to finance social benefits for the unemployed. And we already paid for tax exemptions of these companies, etc.
The state shuold not mess with the economy because this is a waste of time and money and potentialy stops a development of new technologies.