BP Is Just Too Cheap, Says Widely Followed Hedgie
The London-based company is currently yielding 9%. Some fear the US government will force the company to suspend the dividend, but Tilson isn’t worried. He says BP is one of the most widely held companies in the UK. Suspending the dividend would be “outrageous,” he says.
Tilson says this is a long-term play, where he is taking a 4% position. The danger, he says, is that BP could file bankruptcy. But he points out that shareholders were not hurt when Texaco filed for bankruptcy in the 1980s. He thinks long BP is a good play, given the company’s inexpensive share price now.
While the world holds its collective breath in hopes that the “top kill” will be the first step to capping the oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, Rachel reconstructed an accident in the same area one generation ago:
Teresa, Thank you for finding and posting that segment. I do recall that environmental disaster and I wondered if anyone in mainstream media would actually have the courage to show us that this was no “accident.” Rather this was an example of an engineering problem never solved just waiting to happen again.
This is not a political statement. I’m talking about a social phenomenon — the possible end to the religion of unfettered free market CORPORATE capitalism — as the masses realize they’ve been had.
This time could be different. The downside of the Libertarian dream, the so-called negative externalities — a sterile term in economics lexicon — have become tangible in the wake of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
This time, it was AIG, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Fanny and Freddie spewing toxic byproducts of barely-regulated economic activities conducted across borders by behemoth multinational corporations, Wall Street finance that buried Main Street in a hail of collateral damage in the form of millions of lost jobs, deflated real estate and stock values.
P.S. If anything, Dr. Paul wasted a golden opportunity to compare and contrast crony capitalism/corporate welfare to individual entrepreneurs struggling to start businesses. Sensible regulation of the Goliaths levels the playing field for the Davids.
P.S. If anything, Dr. Paul wasted a golden opportunity to compare and contrast crony capitalism/corporate welfare to individual entrepreneurs struggling to start businesses. Sensible regulation of the Goliaths levels the playing field for the Davids.
For sure, Libertarianism should have a healthy dose of grass-roots populism, and recognizing crony govt corporatism for the evil that it is would help offset the cognitive dissonance present in the rest of Rand Paul’s ludicrous belief system. I just think that guys like Rand Paul get so caught up in their principled ideology that they fail to grasp the practicalities of governing within a complex dynamic system– it reminds me of the ideological bishops who accept the confessions of pedophile priests, yet immediately ex-communicate the nun who “allowed” an abortion to save a woman’s life. Purism to a fault.
Exactly. To borrow a line from a recent CFR article, it’s 19th-century policy prescriptions applied to 21st-century realities. Dr. Paul should have been the first guy to speak out on BP’s military industrialesque business practices.
Mike R. 1:01 PM on June 9, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply
http://www.cnbc.com/id/37578731
Alternative opine: Oil industry insider Matt Simmons says BP won’t exist by end of summer.