8. Solyndra, you screwed it up for everybody

8. Solyndra, you screwed it up for everybody

If there's one company everyone can agree was a turkey, it was Solyndra.

Foes of the Obama administration's clean energy strategy are having a field day dissecting the bankrupt solar company that shut down after receiving a $535 million federal loan guarantee. Even staunch proponents of renewable energy now question whether giving loans to individual companies is a smart idea. For an extra bonus, entrepreneurs are having a hard time even getting private funding for their new ideas.

With naive VCs and government money sloshing around, we knew some money would be lost. But Solyndra, which was unable to compete economically and actually gave out bonuses (!) to executives in its final months, succeeded in a way no one expected: bursting the green-tech bubble.

--By Martin LaMonica