CEOs of such companies are ipso facto, ultra vires, infra vide, inter alia narcissistic. <They slimed us, then its narcisisstic CEO said he 'wanted his [posh] life back' so I am naturally not very pleased with it.
> Note that narcissism does NOT apply to people like Dr Irwin Jacobs, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates etc who actually start and build great companies [though they can be and of course have supreme self-confidence].
But to be boss of BP requires a heck of a lot more than simply narcissism. The top managers are normally very decent people in my experience. It's the half way ones who are more variable and less pleasant.
I watched the "I'd like my life back" interview. It was a very reasonable comment. He would have been going day and night on the disaster and of course would have been wanting to get things stabilized and back to "normal". Anyone who didn't would be more akin to Dr Strangelove.
Just as Obama and Bush went off to play golf while the world was up to its ears in disasters and potential bigger ones, regular people, including CEOs, need some head space and downtime. Remember, Tony Hayward wasn't single-handedly rounding up the oil. He was just the bloke delegating who should do what to organize it. Obama does the same.
Other than the people on the platform who died or were injured, their families and the BP shareholders, everyone else made big bucks. Overall, the USA was a big winner other than Obama ruining it by stopping oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico which can't be blamed on BP, or "British Petroleum" as Obama mistakenly and contemptuously called it. Many $billions were transferred from BP shareholders to hordes of people with their hands out. Some were merely compensated for loss, others made big bucks outright [lawyers, oil spill companies, hordes of others].
As predicted by me within a week or two of the spill, it was a fizzer as an environmental catastrophe. Now there's not much at all to show for it, unfortunately for those still hoping to score big bucks from the stash of cash.
Macro economics [and geopolitics] are interests of mine too, not just applied science. You must admit, my macro economic gold price distillation of all the world into two simple numbers was remarkably prescient. So too my QCOM prediction of 20 years ago. Globalstar was half right - I still shake my head that they just carried on right into financial disaster = we should keep that in mind when wondering whether the USA will do the same thing on a grand scale, and so far, it seems likely that they will. New Zealand is doing much the same though few seem to have noticed, with NZ$ at near record levels vs US$ [since 40 years ago]. Recommendation = short NZ$!! [Annoyingly, I am about to buy it, to get more grocery money]
Mqurice |
