‘Not enough money in world’ to pay every spill claim: oil fund czar

Barack Obama's attacks on BP hurting British pensioners

BP's position at the top of the London Stock Exchange and its previous reliability have made it a bedrock of almost every pension fund in the country, meaning its value is crucial to millions of workers. The firm's dividend payments, which amount to more than £7 billion a year, account for £1 in every £6 paid out in dividends to British pension pots.

So that's my pension, those of friends, family etc...if you want your money you can come and bloody well get it the hard way Mr Obama

reply to post by timski


This is going to be difficult to explain to someone who thinks like you.

Corporations were formed so that the owners of a corporation could escape liability for the actions of their company if something went really, really wrong.

You, as a part owner of BP for instance, will not go to jail for being careless with those mens lives and killing some of them by ignoring safety. You will not be tried for manslaughter. You will not do jail time. You also will not lose one penny beyond your investment. You cannot be sued for damages in excess of the corporations assets. So you will not lose your house, your car, your life savings, etc., if the damages exceed the wealth of the corporation.

These are the protections you get when you buy stock in a corporation. A normal business owner, depending on the TYPE of business, (the legal form of it) could lose the entire business and everything else they owned plus go to jail.


What YOU are asking for is to have zero personal liability for your corporations actions, (which you already have) PLUS you want the corporation itself to be exempt from liability for its actions so that you do not lose your investment. Which is all you have at stake. Which is significantly more than I personally think should be legal now.

You want, in other words, to have your cake and eat it to.

An investors RESPONSIBILITY is to make damn good and sure, a) they know they are gambling when they buy stock, and b) know what kind of company they are buying into to mitigate their risk.

This is not the first time BP has thrown caution and safety to the wind in order to maximize profit. It would not have taken much work at all for any of those investors to find out that BP has management that does not take safety seriously. One 5 minute google search would have sufficed.

But apparently they didnt, or if they did, they decided to risk it anyway. Americans own BP stock too. It isnt only poor old British pensioners who are going to have their portfolios take a beating if BP is dissolved, (which it wont be, I am certain, our courts are far too pro-corporate for that.)

The bottom line is, people who own stock in any company are risking their investment. Thats the nature of the game. The game is already stacked in your favor. If you think the game should be a guaranteed win for you, tough. Wouldnt we all like that, it isnt how it works. And asking for a guaranteed win is a little whiney and greedy, especially since you want to save British pensioners, at the expense of all the people whose economies your corporation (assuming you own stock) BP is currently ruining.

What you are asking is blatantly, and unabashedly self interested and greedy, and to that we just have to say, "no."

The damage would have been a *fraction* it is, and will be, had the US government not stood in the way, literally, of the clean up offers. I believe it's a travesty to lay all the damage at the feet of BP, when Obama and his administration disallowed the Dutch assistance that could have sucked up 99% of the oil.

There's no difference from a house on fire and the city refusing to allow the fire to be fought. The house burns... and probably several neighbors as well. Whose fault is it?

reply to post by timski


You chose that risk, maybe you should have made better choices or held your company accountable. That's what happens when you invest, sometimes it doesn't work out. You can't expect the people of the Gulf region to eat your risk, because you surely wouldn't have shared any profit. I believe that the company should be dissolved as well, if they can't adequately pay everyone back that they hurt. Remember, you took the risk by choosing a pension that was invested in that manner, the people of the Gulf region didn't get to make that choice.

--airspoon

Originally posted by Geeky_Bubbe
The damage would have been a *fraction* it is, and will be, had the US government not stood in the way, literally, of the clean up offers. I believe it's a travesty to lay all the damage at the feet of BP, when Obama and his administration disallowed the Dutch assistance that could have sucked up 99% of the oil.

Apparently our officials felt that they had to act in accordance with our laws, which do not allow the use of the methods proposed by the Dutch. They did eventually relax those restrictions, but you are acting as if they were refusing for no good reason at all. They were not. I am sure after this, there will be some revision of our laws, to enable faster response, but what you are doing is blaming the ambulance driver for not blowing every red light and breaking every law on the highway for the damage to the patient that was caused by a drunk driver.

The person who causes the accident is liable, naturally. Not the laws that are there for whatever reason that slow down the emergency response.

"That $20-billion fund, that's not a ceiling," Biden said. "BP is required to pay whatever it is [that] falls under their responsibility, whether it ends up being $25, $30, $40 or $50 billion."

The Obama administration pressed BP to create the fund this month, in what Rep. Joe L. Barton (R- Texas) called a "shakedown." That language was echoed in a statement by the Republican Study Committee, a caucus of conservative House GOP members. Biden denounced those comments soon afterward, arguing that the fund was meant to "take care of the immediate needs of people who are drowning."

Source

What I keep hearing is we SHOULD not depend on the government-

This conundrum serves as a great example;

we don't want government to intervene, legal recourse should be the only course of remedy in a free America -

However this free market approach works about as good as the government, in this example. BP is going to duck as much liability as possible and many many people are going to face the eleven pound meat hammer. Again, SHOULD THE GOVERNMENT
ACT IN THE INTERESTS OF THE PEOPLE? Or should they be screwed because they knew
there were oil rigs out there? Moral Hazard?

IT is true, there is no incentive to clean this up, we have yet to see the health suits from the prolonged benzene exposure. Such costs WOULD dwarf the financial damages, IF such damages were paid out in an equitable way once they occur. The SCOTUS
will interoperate the constitution, in the name of busine,,, I mean, freedom and God Bless America. Ain't my ass, ain't my problem Jack!

At the bottom of the pot, as individuals WE cannot effectively coerce big business in any meaningful fashion, not in this case IMO. Maybe we could get Ten thousand of us to
steadfastly boycott BP, that will punish them

We can leverage government to some degree, to act in "some" proactive fashion. Like it or not I do not see ANY individual out there who can do it John Wayne style.

I will say it again but if this isn't a trial run for freedom, I don't know what is.

Doesn't speak to much for government, but then government sucks in plain sight.
The theory of victimless crime and its legitimacy is failing like Obama's campaign slogan. Any other private observation is delusional IMO, sorry.

we could always use collective bargaining

But really, I am waiting for some bloke to by Dodger stadium and install a Reactor on his private property. This faith in theory and artifice is all bologna, not trying to be a dick, but its how I see it. Money is power...

Originally posted by Geeky_Bubbe
The damage would have been a *fraction* it is, and will be, had the US government not stood in the way, literally, of the clean up offers. I believe it's a travesty to lay all the damage at the feet of BP, when Obama and his administration disallowed the Dutch assistance that could have sucked up 99% of the oil.

There's no difference from a house on fire and the city refusing to allow the fire to be fought. The house burns... and probably several neighbors as well. Whose fault is it?

then that begs the question, why didn't you watch the electrician install all the faulty
wiring he installed, before the fire?

This is like healthcare,,, I have to pay for states and people who approve of drill baby drill? Socialism - BP and the citizens of the south should figure it out, not the governments issue, privatize the mess. Should have thought about that before them people moved down there, etc... Stay out my rigs, but pay for the disaster because we
convinced everyone to listen to us -

IT would be a hell of a pickle if everyone was such a patriot -