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Gold/Mining/Energy : Big Dog's Boom Boom Room -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: I_C_Deadpeople who wrote (133580)	6/2/2010 1:02:04 PM
From: ChanceIs	Respond to of 206166

>>>the shareholders will and should have to take the kick in the ass for that. That is the risk they took.<<< I agree. It is really a question of extent and timeliness. The banks got bailed out because they convinced Congress that they were vital AND that they were so intertwined that all of the dominoes would fall. I bought the later point only partially. BP is intertwined, but not to such a great extent. They may have a lot of contractors left twisting in the wind. No doubt they are huge players in the futures market. Oddly enough, Goldman Sachs sold half its BP position in March. I would be only moderately surprised if one of the banks and/or big hedge funds had not already called the White House and asked for a BP bailout or quick resolution to keep the dominoes from toppling. Robert Rubin called to ask for an Enron bailout because Citi had such a big stake. (Edit: If you scratch the surface I expect that you will find that BP isn't a financial company, unlike GE with its commercial real estate speculation division, or GM with its GM Finance Group dabbling in subprime, CDOs...whatever. From that perspective they are probably more deserving of some sympathy. I know somebody in the banking business who swears that a few medium-large sized banks (e.g. Wells Fargo) are hell bent on making acquisitions in this especially turbulent time so that they can become too big to fail. Interesting perspective.) The point I am making is that the watermelon should be cleft with a nice sharp samurai sword in the near future. There is plenty of room for debate over whether the US gets 1/2, 2/3, or 3/4, of the melon. The lawyers would be POed. In the mean time let's do throw all of the execs we can in jail. As I said before, that doesn't cost much, and it would probably improve BP's performance.