free markets don’t work, nor do unregulated corporations
May 31st, 2010The real lesson of the unravelling Gulf of Mexico fiasco is that the mega-corporations abuse their power, if given half a chance by light-touch regulation, just like the banks. And the costs of dealing with that abuse of power can well run into hundreds of billions of pounds.
Why did the Deepwater Horizon disaster happen? Because the health and safety regulations for BP (and of course for the other oil majors) have been whittled down to a point of almost complete ineffectiveness. The safety standards on the exploded rig, owned by Transocean but leased to BP, were the responsibility of the Marshall Islands in the north Pacific becase all 35 Transocean rigs were registered there under the flag of convenience. The aim was to scrimp on safety inspections. As a US Congressman has just noted: “Coastguard inspection of a US-flagged mobile offshore drilling unit takes 2-3 weeks, but the safety examination of a foreign flag offshore offshore drilling unit takes 3-4 hours”. (more…)
