Have you ever had an old car, knowing that if it got stolen, you would then collect insurance on it so you could go buy a new car instead? If so, you would certainly look forward to that day. SO do you think your government is honestly "sad" that this incident happened? Or do you think the opposite, that they are actually now so fu%king happy looking forward to fine BP (probably Haliburton and Transocean too) millions, if not billions of $$$, over all kinds of criminal/environmental/civil charges? All the government actually ever wanted to happen are such incidents (excluding the human casualties though) in order to get their dirty hands on $$$$. Similar to the car analogy, simple as that.
There won't be anything other that token fines. These companies have the politicians in their pockets.
The only problem with your theory is that our elected officials can just spend money anyways. In today's economic climate, there is no need to wait to spend until they collect fines. Just spend. No need to bother raising taxes either. Just spend. You don't even have to borrow the money these days. Just spend. Write a check, how many zeroes did you want? Just spend. Pay no attention to the account balance, these checks never bounce. Just spend. Spending is completely divorced from revenue in US gov't these days. Just spend!
Gubmint scam artists aren't interested in a one shot payoff, for reasons stated in other posts in this thread. They can one shot as many marks as they want, but they have to set each one up, it takes time, and why do all that work just for one payday? Instead they will...are...using this as leverage to force energy companies to make regular payments over extended periods of time. The ""cleanup tax" currently making it's way thru the legislature is just the beginning. Over time, the supply of oil/energy is...expected to dwindle, while at the same time, demand will certainly increase, by orders of magnitude. Obama's using this crisis to "get in on the ground floor." A few cent tax per gallon now will turn into a billion, even trillion dollar revenue stream in the future, and by then, the gubmint "cut" will be business as usual. Once they devote a few pennies on the dollar to "the poor, the children, the needy" and those people get used to the income, we will face the same choice Greece does today: "Keep paying or we burn down the cities."
BP is too big to fail, but there is always nothing wrong with buying Puts with Jan 2012 expiry, in case the whole economy collapses again(double dip scenario).
So in the end, its not the chinese who are poisoning Americans with their products but the British who have destroyed a whole swath of the country, killed every living sea creature and turned the nation's sea into muck. makes the dry-wall paint incident look like a playground exercise.
Prez is doing a press conference right now. A few things are almost certain when he gets involved: 1) We'll spend another boatload (no pun intended) of money we don't have and get nothing accomplished 2) There will be stifling regs and/or taxes affecting those who had nothing to do with the spill 3) There will be no mention of which politician is the top recipient of BP PAC & individual money over the past 20 years (hint: middle name rhymes with "insane" and last name rhymes with "Osama")
Some reported should had asked how much campaign contribution did O and his party got from BP and other big oil interest.