Games big corporations play [View All]

[Hannah Bell]

Bhopal (1984) marked the horrific beginning of a new era. One that signalled the collapse of restraint on corporate power. The ongoing BP spill in the Mexican Gulf — with estimates ranging from 30,000-80,000 barrels a day — tops off a quarter-of-a-century where corporations could (and have) done anything in the pursuit of profit, at any human cost. Barack Obama's ‘hard words' on BP are mostly pre-November poll-rants. The BP can take a lot of comfort from two U.S. Supreme Court judgments in the past two years.

The first of these came in 2008. That was in the case of the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989 — till then the biggest recorded (or admitted to) oil spill in history.... In the Exxon case, a jury in 1994 imposed penalties of $5 billion on the company. In 2006, points out Sharon Smith in an incisive piece in counterpunch.org, “an appeals court halved the punitive claim to $2.5 billion.” And in June 2008, “the Supreme Court reduced that amount by 80 per cent, to roughly $500 million — an average of $15,000 per plaintiff.” Exxon CEO Lee Raymond who fiercely fought the damages, retired with a $400 million package all for himself....

In September the same year, Wall Street's kleptocrats famously tanked the world economy. Their actions cost millions in America and elsewhere their jobs and livelihoods. Yet, U.S. CEOs took home billions in bonuses that very year...

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