BP facebook discussion. If you don't feel comfortable having your name displayed, let me know and i'll x it.

Remove

Henrique Akaishi Since April 20th BP, APC, RIG and HAL lost a combined $140 Bil in market cap... BP = Bankrupt Petroleum?

June 9 at 9:39pm  · Comment · 

Varun Saluja 

bp made more than 20 billion in profits last year, i doubt they will be bankrupted

June 9 at 10:57pm · 

Henrique Akaishi 

personally i agree. they also have 12 billion in capital reserves. but analysts are skeptical. it'll be interesting to see how it all plays out

June 9 at 11:27pm · 

Jack Carpentier 

New estimates have BP paying upwards of $40B just for cleanup, excluding any lawsuits and additional litigation costs. It'll be interesting to see if they can survive, IMO.

June 10 at 9:41am · 

Kristie Kranzler 

my birthday is April 20th :)

June 10 at 9:46am · 

Drew Kestell 

4.20 .... :P

June 10 at 1:37pm · 

Pete Jacobson 

2 words, drilling moratorium.

June 10 at 3:21pm · 

Jack Carpentier 

Jack Carpenter likes Pete Jacobson's comment.

June 10 at 9:11pm · 

Henrique Akaishi 

how do you guys feel about the White House's push for unlimited liability cap for oil spillers. Current law has a cap on the liability that BP may face. I believe it's 75 million. The White House is pushing to raise that limited to unlimited. These liabilities include payment of lost wages due to the moratorium, litigations, clean up and more. If it passes, Goldman Sachs estimates total costs could reach upwards of $180 billion, sure to bankrupt BP. This would costs upwards of 50,000 U.S. jobs and would skyrocket the price tag on oil. Furthermore, if BP files for chapter 11, they could end up avoiding these costs altogether, leaving tax payers to foot the bill, increased unemployment (already at 9%) and higher oil costs. Not to mention the political repercussions it will have between the U.S. and Great Brittan.

June 10 at 9:29pm · 

Jack Carpentier 

BP is already going to file for Chapter 11 (most likely), which does NOT mean that they get to throw away all of their debt obligations. Liquidation (Chapter 7) would be the only true means of doing so. Also, they have already put, in writing, that they will be responsible for all cleanup costs and "reasonable" lawsuits arising from the issue.

I have absolutely ZERO sympathy for the oil companies (especially Exxon) who continue to post record profits even with lower oil prices, and if it wasn't for their own sheer negligence (BP, that is), none of this would have happened in the first place.

The absolute last thing we need to do is bail out an oil company or limit their liability. They can buy insurance for that if they really need it. Besides that, though, not many jobs will end up being lost because other companies would be foolish to not pursue the platforms and drill operations that BP has. It's their own damn fault that jobs would be lost anyhow, not ours.

If they REALLY want to make sure something like this doesn't happen, they can put more than a half-assed effort into renewable energy when automakers are making legitimate strides and saving their own companies by doing so.

I am not, nor will I ever be, an oil apologist.

June 10 at 9:38pm · 

Jack Carpentier 

Exxon, Chevron, Tesoro, et al would love nothing more than a liquidation of BP, I am sure. I'm also quite sure that BP has safeguarded itself against a total company collapse by registering different business units in different countries to spread liability (hence listings on both the London Stock Exchange and NYSE) and would only lose its US operations at worst. As for Britain, tough shit - they have enough to deal with already with their political party collapse and prime minister shakeup.

June 10 at 9:44pm · 

Henrique Akaishi 

When it comes to sympathy toward BP, I, like most americans, have none. However, the question at hand is whether these accountability efforts are making a bad situation worse. The entire U.S economy could suffer tremendously. It's choosing the lesser of two evils. The economy's already weak, are we really looking for a double dip recession here? We're not looking to bail out BP by any means. But if BP goes bankrupt there will be no more BP to pay for all these cots. Tax payers will foot the bill. Thousands of jobs WILL be lost. When financial institutions went bankrupt because of the financial crisis, the jobs lost weren't just the employees, the effect trickled down to thousands of Americans.

June 10 at 9:52pm · 

Henrique Akaishi 

My concern is not towards BP or Britain. It's the repercussion these actions will have on the U.S economy. We don't need more problems.

June 10 at 9:56pm · 

Jack Carpentier 

From an economic standpoint, that IS a good point. I guess to sum up my argument, though, there will be very little job loss since the other oil companies will clamor for bargain-basement prices on the now-"abandoned" operations of BP. From a cleanup aspect, though, it is certainly a big issue. I agree with you there 100%.

June 10 at 10:15pm · 

Jack Carpentier 

It's a really good topic to talk about, though! Thanks for the great discussion you have sparked here!

June 10 at 10:15pm · 

Henrique Akaishi 

i'm getting really interested this stuff. I'm glad more people share my interest :]

Friday at 12:38am · 

Dean A Schumann II 

Hey, I am getting ticked at some of the tories. one Boris Johnson was" accusing the U.S. President of 'buck passing' and 'beating up' the British-based company.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1285467/BP-OIL-SPILL-Lord-Tebbit-Boris-Johnson-attack-Obamas-anti-British-rhetoric.html#ixzz0qbF7qmNm

I have an Idea hear lets go over there and start pumping oil down the river theams and see how the brits react. I am tried of BP not doing there F ING JOB. I am a center right political person. I like the idea that buiness big or small take resposibity for the things they do. NOT BLAME others. CLEAN YOUR SHIT UP BP

Friday at 8:56pm · 

Dean A Schumann II 

The us economy is fine, what we need to work on is China under valuing its currancy. That is a way bigger problem than any oil issue. Oil is paid for by US Dollars all around the world. It trades on the CBOE, with the united states as having a good political back bone, one which has a very good legal system, I see that every other country will putmoney hear no matter what. The us econome is strong, it just needs to diversify into somthing new. I think the united states needs to start a technoligical new deal. Lets focus inward on re newable energy and become the golba leader. then we can sell what we know to china when it gets so pulted it has no idea what to do.

Take a look at our puliter prize winning neigbor who grew up here in st louis park

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdQvdIArOVQ

Friday at 9:04pm · 

Mac Perrsen 

Where there is oil, there is BP. Forever.

Friday at 9:08pm · 

Dean A Schumann II 

BP is already going to file for Chapter 11 (most likely), which does NOT mean that they get to throw away all of their debt obligations. Liquidation (Chapter 7) would be the only true means of doing so. Also, they have already put, in writing, that they will be responsible for all cleanup costs and "reasonable" lawsuits arising from the issue.

I don't think you can file chapter 11 or 7 in british law, I do agree with you oil co's suck

Friday at 9:15pm · 

Jack Carpentier 

They can file Chapter 11 in the US, though, since their operations here are set up separately.

Intro International Investing

http://moneywatch.bnet.com/investing/video/investors-why-you-need-china-and-brazil/388541/?tag=video-roto-1;series-list

FINRA

The news in the past few weeks has been saturated with the FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority)

Today, I want to talk a little about what's going on with these three things, and what are your thoughts on these subjects. 

Background on the sub prime mortgage crisis: there's a lot that could be explained here but I'll give you the short version. Basically, rating agencies, such as Moody's, were giving AAA ratings on mortgages that banks then sold. However, the very people buying these ratings (investment banks) were paying the rating agencies which leads many people to believe the conflict of interest are party to blame of the crisis. I Anyways, the banks cut up and packaged these gold rated mortgage backed securities into complex, nonsensical packages that no one could understand, and eventually sold them to investors through various mediums including mutual funds. Well, home buyers bought these mortgages left and right, paying a small down payment, owing almost the entire value of the mortgage on the house. The worse part is these people had bad credit ratings hence "sub prime" mortgage. Eventually, the buyers defaulted on their loans and banks had to seize the property. As more and more of this happened, the value of these mortgages fell and these home buyers were left with a larger debt on their mortgage than the mortgage was worth. Then they stopped paying their mortgage, defaulted on the lean, and furthered the downward spiral. Banks were foreclosing and seizing these properties but each seize takes about 8 months to complete from start to finish and often the people had already left the houses, leaving it prone to vandalism. This causes the value of the properties to decrease significantly and banks to receive as little as 40 cents on the dollar at foreclosure actions. The rest took a life of its own. As people began to lose more and more money, fear and speculation drove the market into crisis. 

FINRA: On May 20, 2010, the Senate passed the Financial Regulatory Reform Bill by a vote of 59-39. (http://banking.senate.gov/public/_files/FinancialReformSummary231510FINAL.pdf) The legislature has 3 main parts, regulators would receive more authority to monitor mortgages and securities, reduce debt they take on and increase capital reserves and finally, worst comes to worse, the government can seize failing banks and sell it back piece, by piece. Hello big brother, you're getting mighty large... 

Another interesting topic regarding this is the Glass Steagall Act of 1933. I'd explain it but this post is getting long enough as it is. So google the Act before giving an opinion. My concern is that they enacted the act after the Great Depression but then the Graham-Leach-Billey Act of 1999 completely repealed it. So the smart people of 1933 found that it was important to separate the investment banks from the depository banks but then the smart people of 1999 found that among other things it promoted deflation and repealed it. Now the "smart" people of 2010 are thinking about reenacting it or some version of it? There are huge problems either way, why are we just switching back and forth. Destroying the U.S. economy isn't a fashion trend that comes back every into fashion every 20 years.  

The bill now proceeds to House-Senate conference where the Senate version and the House version are reconciled. It could be ready for President Obama's signature as early as July 4, 2010! If passed this would be the most sweeping overhaul of the financial sector since the Great Depressio

What do you think about this new bill?

The next segment will be on BP. What the future of BP is and whether you should invest in it. BTW BP closed at a 52 week low today of 34.68 even though the DJIA and the S&P both went up. 

DJIA closes under 10,000 at 9931: thoughts?

http://www.schaeffersresearch.com/commentary/content/monday+morning+outlook+djia+loses+grip+on+10000+as+economic+worries+mount/observations.aspx?ID=100305