But the guy who teaches public policy at Berkeley did not sound like he is joking the other day.
If the government can take over giant global insurer AIG and the auto giant General Motors and replace their CEOs in order to keep them financially solvent, it should be able to put BP’s North American operations into temporary receivership in order to stop one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.
And this would beg the inevitable question: How does nationalizing BP’s North American operations plug the hole?
Short answer? It doesn’t. While BP is certainly struggling to come up with a fix for the problem, I guaran-damn-tee the U.S. Government doesn’t have one, either.
Yeah, this is a fucked-up mess an order of magnitude worse than Exxon Valdez, but Uncle Sugar stepping in and trying to fix it will only make it worse.
