Cocktail - who's gonna pay for it all?

(sarcasm alert ...)
Heck we all paid for the bankers huge f**k ups and bonuses.
I'm sure we can do the same for the oil companies.
After all, they are only too keep to help us out when times are hard.
Del

O'Bumer said a day or two after this mishap that 'Oil exploration must continue with more care' basically - after all oil doesn't just fuel combustion engines, it also fuels all political parties regardless of their agendas. And who said that 'oil ain't a dirty business'?

Sorry bud, as you can see my location has changed again due to I am being too busy cruising the river looking out for some possible oil spill.

Incidentally, instead of acting like a sniffer...g here, why don't you check out some independent news sources which released some real alarming discovery;- "In addition, on May 15, researchers announced the discovery of immense underwater plumes of oil not visible from the surface."

It further states that the so called spill can be up to 20x times worse than thought i.e. 16,000m3 = 16,000 million liters per day as opposed to 790,000liters preciously estimated. And I think the word -SPILL- should be changed to GUSH.

Gush!!! - don't you think that's bad?

I suppose, if you're one of them then this is not a news to you other than trying to sus out how people react to it all in different parts of the world, don't ya? So, why don't you just....and try to do something less destructive but more constructive. Can I blow you a...x?

Personally, I am surprised that this hasn't happened more often more places around the world.

The North Sea is a harsher environment that the Gulf of Mexico in many ways. I hope there haven't been spills there, or elsewhere, that might have been under reported.

And out of the almost 3,000 wells in the gulf, there is one mishap (OK disaster) over several decades.

Sure, it could have been avoided, but hindsight is always 20/20.

So many people are of the opinion that the oil industry is evil (pronounced e - ville), but they wouldn't even be in existence were there no demand for petroleum products. If they are evil, so are we all, being complicit by using said products!

I do not know how many wells are operating in the gulf, but surely one is more than enough to cause an unprecidented enviro-damage that those further away, like yourself, might think is nothing. This disaster seemingly will dwarf the Exxon oil spill in Alaska since it is spewing @1000 cubic meters of oil a day. An average tanker may carry a bit more than a week's out put only. It is also interesting to note how congress recently forced Toyota CEOs, under oath, to appologise for causing allegedly a few deaths due to allegedly some stuck accelerator pedals. Yet, the explosion on this oil rig alone caused, at least, 11 deaths and not to mention the bio-damage. Surely, there's something must be wrong when a government cannot wisely differentiate between important issues. And I do hope that David Letterman will have as much sarcasm to make about this issue as he had about Toyota.

No, I am not saying it's nothing. It will probably turn out worse than the Valdez incident. All I'm really saying is that, when you are doing these kinds of operations, something is bound to go wrong sooner or later. When things do go wrong, pointing fingers doesn't help solve the problem.

As to our government, it has degraded into chaos. Everyone serves their own interests.

"When things do go wrong, pointing fingers doesn't help solve the problem."

May be you're right.

However, it still does not justify why did congress question so aggressively Toyota CEOs under oath over a very trivial issue while George Bush and his vice president, Dick..., did not give evidence and answer questions under oath to the 911 commission instead, they did it on their own terms.

Guess this when they say 'what goes around comes around' eventually.

Do you know 911 commission was headed by Philip Zelikow who was highly shady character and later wrote the preemptive war strategy in Iraq? Therefore, he deliberately did not even try to get to the bottom of the 911 attack which, as it is now known, was administered and conducted by Dick Cheney while Bush was on a so called vacation.

You can rest assured that Obomer's administration won't do much to make BP answer questions regarding this oil spill. As the saying goes - It'll be alright.

O'Bumer - what a bummer!

Those of us who work, make money, buy stuff, and pay taxes will pay for this, and every f-up that comes along. Where else does the government and the corporations get their money. BP's CEO can wax away about responsibility...acting like he and his company know they need to do the right thing.

That's because he and his board know where the money actually comes from.

A lot of tax-payers won't be able to pay tax now because their lively hood is being wracked by this enviro-disaster.

Some of you could shed more light on this, I heard on the news today that now the American public is demanding the seizure of Bps assets, is that true? Frankly they should, if that's the case. Let BP pick up every bill for this mass rather than allow them get away like Exxon did in Alaska by trying to avert responsibility.

I remember how the public rushed from all over to rescue the wild life and helped to clean up the shores, while the greedy local hotel owners saw that as an ideal opportunity to charge extra for their services.

Who's going to pay? In the end only consumers pay. All others get an effective 'free ride'.

Why do I say this? In recent history just look at the 'tobacco' and 'asbestos' trials. Big companies will 'pay', but they make more later and the cost of the 'litigation' just like paying for 'regulation', comes out of the cash flow. How does cash flow get generated? Customers pay.

The same holds through for 'insurance companies' paying for disasters. Their entire business is 'assuming risk from others', and their business model is to 'assume risk at a profit'.

Does this help? It doesn't make it any easier to take, just hopefully a bit more understandable.

"Who's going to pay? In the end only consumers pay."

GA for hitting the nail right-on.

Sorry if that response seems a little odd. But if you 'follow the money' throughout it's 'lifecycle', you will find that is a truism.

Paid for by the consumers or customers is how it has always been. Entrepenurs are the first consumer of their product. They invest in their hopes and dreams. They 'sell' part of their dream to investors (VC, shareholders, they are all basically the same, they are customers). The business sells a product, oil, tires, cars, baby diapers, they are just products, and who buys them ... all together now, ... the customers.

Now what happens when the 'end customers' stop buying? Well, let's look at some Dow Jones Industrial component companies. U.S. Leather products made 'buggy whips'. Well, they didn't change, customers stopped buying 'buggy whips'. So who 'owned' the buggy whips? Well any creditors and share holders when they went bankrupt in 1952. (Details according to wikipaedia, under Dow_Jones_Industrial_Average#Early_years ). How are they the 'customers', well they bought into the dream either by buying shares and holding onto their dream for to long, or as creditors, they loaned money to the 'dream', with the hope of getting paid back.

Still, they (shareholders, banks, creditors) were still the customers.

...

With the 'bailouts' that happened in the last few years... who paid? That is who the customers are.

If someone is looking for some information on economics... I suggestion checking out the free video's from khanacademy.org under Economics, both macro and micro. The good thing about their presentation is it isn't as dry as the college classes I took. ... It isn't like watching a '70s sitcom, but it is good.

Maybe he or she will