Barack Obama's $2 Billion Investment Fund

[Down1]

Despite huge losses, the White House is again betting billions of taxpayer dollars on venture capital deals.
Do the same thing, expect different results.
Boring.

3 page article.

Here is the interesting part right up front.

Jonathan Leitersdorf is a wheeler-dealer with Israeli and British passports—and a reputation in New York for living large. He once reportedly spent $30 million building a 177-foot yacht and used to own an 11,000-square-foot Manhattan party loft, which had a memorable cameo in Sex and the City. Jerry Seinfeld got married there, and Chelsea Clinton used it for a birthday bash before Leitersdorf sold it to billionaire Ronald Burkle. But when Leitersdorf needed cash to start a venture capital firm, he turned to a much more pedestrian set of partners for backing: U.S. taxpayers.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2012/07/17/barack-obamas-2-billion-investment-fund/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2012/07/17/barack-obamas-2-billion-investment-fund/

[FreeEnergy]

Interesting article


Let’s walk through how this plays out when things go south. The government’s receiver began poring over the wreckage at ECentury Capital Partners, an SBIC in Chevy Chase, Md. that was partially backed by an affiliate of the Rothschild banking family, and found seven remaining portfolio companies. The receiver closed out four of these investments, including Bitwave Semiconductor, in which ECentury had plunked down $11.3 million. Bitwave tried to allow wireless carriers and *cellphone makers to deploy more ser*vices with additional functionality but was liquidated for nothing in 2010 after investment bankers couldn’t sell it.

As of March there were three remaining flops in the portfolio, including a $4.8 million investment in a semiconductor-chip maker for which the receiver determined “there is little that can be done.” In March ECentury owed the SBA $35.1 million of the $43.2 million in loans and guarantees the government had provided to the investment fund, court records show.