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21 sats \ 3 replies \ @Cje95 23 Oct \ parent \ on: Trump Admin To Take Equity Stakes In Quantum Computing Firms Stacker_Stocks
So I can speak to one deal just cause it dealt with what I do at work. The Lithium America Thacker Pass Mine has been in development for 6-8 years… can't remember off the top of my head… the biggest issue facing them has been enviro/greens lawsuits against them 24/7.
Last year DOE gave them a ~$2 billion loan to help speed up development of it. The Trump admin switched details of the loan to not only a stake but also extended the loan repayment by another 10 years I think. This change also comes with an exit plan that when the mine/company hit different milestones the government will be selling off the 2% stake they have (stake in company could be more but the stake in the mine is only 2%).
One of the biggest positives for this pseudo-acquisition I that the permitting is now able to be supercharged and the project can't keep getting sued for the same thing over and over.
Do I love it? No but I do think it's better than the loans… loans we got nothing out of it no sort of collateral but in this way we do.
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Yes, I found this:
Loan size: $2.26 billion (including $1.97 billion of principal and $289.7 million of capitalized interest)
So that's probably neutral vs treasury cost. 1
I'm not sure if the ownership is long-term beneficial unless there is zero chance of adversarial office holders in the future, but that's another discussion.
Footnotes
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Also, for scale, this is about 17h worth of total US debt interest. By the time you wake up tomorrow morning, this has been spent. ↩
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