The Dead Zone (or, BP and the Oil Well That Keeps on Giving)

[Lemur]

Oh, and it's Adam Scott, the cartoon is Dilbert.

And between the day he announced he was buying BP stock and today it has lost at least 40% of its value, so I think mebbe Dilbert's daddy got pwned. Timing is everything.

[Crazed Rabbit]

And between the day he announced he was buying BP stock and today it has lost at least 40% of its value, so I think mebbe Dilbert's daddy got pwned. Timing is everything.

If he sells now.

Also, from drone's link, the stock lost 45% of its value over the last year, and rose 1.4% after the dividend was cut.

Another interesting thing is the lack of a legal basis for forcing BP to start an escrow account for payouts. Of course, skirting and at times outright defying the rule of law has happened before under this administration in regards to company's finances.

CR

[Azathoth]

Only console games have been priced normally at $60 traditionally.

For the current generation of consoles. Before 2005 or 2006 new games used to be $50.

[Louis VI the Fat]

And between the day he announced he was buying BP stock and today it has lost at least 40% of its value, so I think mebbe Dilbert's daddy got pwned. Timing is everything.

Timing is everything. Earlier today would've been a great time to buy BP.


Capitalism rewards moral bankruptcy.

The reputation of a company - it's moral standing with the public at large - roughly correlates negatively with how well its stock performs.
http://www.slate.com/id/2131777

In psychology, game theory, it turns out a majority of people is willing to incur personal loss just to punish cheaters, that is those who seek a profit at the expense of others. Companies that are perceived to do this, have a low reputation. However, in many a capitalist market, the incentives are to gain a profit at others expense.
Being hated is thus a good indicator of future succes.


Sad.

With a few corrections, many markets could be re-organised to other incentives, which take general interest instead of private interest into account. Unfortunately, this is a taboo in neo-liberalism, which holds that markets must be organised to suit immediate private interest, instead of long-term, sustainable, general interest.

Instead of re-organising our markets to operate to our advantage (including those of companies), we'll vote ourselves into worker ants, operating in an unsafe, unhealthy, dangerous, instable society. One would think we'd had enough by now of a new crisis every three months: resource, food, financial, environmental, monetary, etc etc.


Free market is a deceptive term. It is commonly used to mean little government intervention. This is not the case, never. The Congo has a free market, without government intervention. Western markets, by contrast, are organised by governments. As witness for example BP in the Gulf. There is no such thing as a 'free market' in this case. There is a government that grants concessions, decides who gets to drill, safeguards property, does this in a certain fashion (safeguards private, tangible property over intangible, public, environmental property), decides on saftey regulation, decides the mode of risk management (litigation instead of social risk) , etc.

I for one am of the opinion that BP operated quite rationally within this market. Risks had to be taken. Once disater struck, rational policy is to prevent as little immediate private financial loss as possible, even at the expense of long-term, public, intangible loss (health, environment etc). Such are simply the incentives set by the market BP operates in.