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Unfortunately, we all own stock in the US. (speaking for HN readers who are US citizens)

• philwelch 17y ago
  You don't have to be a US citizen to have a vested interest in the US economy. America is an elephant. When an elephant collapses and dies, the whole jungle feels the impact and smells the rotting stench.
  • kiba 17y ago
    Ditto. We're too interconnected to just not have a rotting stench. More like a keystone specie die, everybody else die.
    • Aetius 17y ago
      No, not die. Simply regress from developing to 3rd or 4th world status.
• joubert 17y ago
  BP should pay for the damage caused by the spill, including the cleanup efforts, no?
  • mkramlich 17y ago
    Agreed. But even if their total bill comes out to say $10 billion, it can come out of their profits earned from only the last 1-3 quarters. Since those profits already came from us, arguably, we the consumers of BP's product have prepayed for the cost of this disaster. In one sense, BP is not going to pay anything. Plus, due to the nature of the incident, it is unlikely that the true "total cost" is going to be charged to BP. How do you come up with a dollar figure for the total short and long term impact to the environment and economy? Very hard to measure, at best you can only estimate.