Catch-22

As the ecological disaster of the century thus far trickles its way out of the news and into the water table, people are beginning to pay less and less attention to the truly silly things that BP officials have been saying. To whit:

[BP] officials have said the moratorium on offshore oil drilling... harmed its cash flow.

"If we are unable to keep [offshore] fields going, that is going to have a substantial impact on our cash flow," David Nagel, executive vice-president for BP America, told the New York Times.

The moratorium "makes it harder for us to fund things, fund these programmes [the cleanup and compensation programs, among others]."

Yeah.

By that logic, of course, we shouldn't regulate after disasters, because otherwise we won't be able to pay for them. Not even disasters. If a company dumps millions of tons of lead and mercury into a municipal water supply to avoid the crippling costs of dealing with industrial byproducts, we shouldn't penalize them, nor should we stop them from doing it after people become sick or die. We should give them tax breaks and possibly government funding so they can afford to pay the victims of their ongoing criminal malfeasance compensation. If something is done wrong, it's important to keep doing it wrong so you can afford to pay off the people who get hurt.

This, of course, extends to bank robbers, who shouldn't be thrown in prison, but rather given assistance to rob further banks so they can afford to pay the fines associated with bank robbing. Or how about drug dealers, who shouldn't be shut down, but rather kept in business so they can pay for their legal costs by selling more drugs. We may be going a bit far afield here.

In summary, apparently BP needs money. They need it because they screwed up. Thus, to get the money to pay for their screw-up, they must make more money by doing the very thing that caused them to screw up in the first place. Capitalism red in tooth and claw my ass.