Quote:
Originally Posted by dyna mo
what do you think obama did to get them to pony up? any guesses? my guess is bp crunched the #s pre-meeting and had already planned to put the money in escrow. and now, guess what, bp can close the books on it and get all the publicity of doing the right thing forced upon them by obama.
could be wrong, but i find it difficult to believe that in the span of a 20 minute meeting, the $20b was thrown out by obama and bp execs huddled up and then said ok, we'll cave.
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Well, BP had no bargaining power going into the meeting and Obama realized that and was able to get a staggering amount of money out them. My point is that I can think of several recent presidents who would not have asked for that money. Also, BP can not "close the books" on this because part of the agreement was that this is in no way a cap.
I have to disagree with your assumption that BP crunched the numbers and was happy to give up 20 billion. All the documents show they are about as stingy as a company can get when it comes to spending money even to the point of trying to save a few hundred thousand dollars. Everyone thinks they are so rich they don't care about money but that's not the case. No company enjoys cutting a 20 billion dollar check with no guarantee they will not have to pay more.