On July 1st 2010 Peter Orzag, Director of the Office of Management and Budget and about to depart as the first bailout official from the Obama Administration, meaning bailing out of his appointed job, not bailing out the country financially, issued a very very important memo to all federal Executive Branch components. Subject: Identifying and recording all direct and indirect expenses from the BP catastrophe. One might ask why this memo has suddenly appeared and is reference as being separate and apart from DOJ potential litigation information is extremely interesting.
That stated the issuance of the memorandum is of historic significance. Why? Imagine if each federal agency had to identify the costs of its operations aligned against certain events or occurrences or even companies. This was not done for the financial bailout and we [citizens of the US] will probably never know how the Federal Reserve Bank of the US used $12 Trillion in capital to prevent a collapse of the economy. I believe this memorandum should be closely analyzed and studied since I think it reflects finally the Administration realizing that it is accountable for the costs of the spill over and beyond hopefully BP's contributions but whether that is the case of not it must save the Gulf Coast economy from disaster. And note some economists have already stated the BP catastrophe will have no major impact on the domestic US economy. while I believe that the $12 Trillion paid out following the Lehman Bros. collapse may be closer to the mark for the BP catastrophe. Please note while indicating the $3B mark has been passed by BP supposedly in its GOM efforts we really have no breakdown for that effort,including lawyers and lobbyist fees to prevent any greater BP exposure than necessary. Also not that Kenneth Feinberg has finally become testy in public about BP's payments and their amounts.
Hey the bottom line is the largest enviromental fast breaking catastrophe in world history has yet to break the surface as to its total impacts, social, economic, environmental or whatever.
