Um, make that $40,000,000,000!

BP's presidentially mandated $20 billion cleanup fund may be only the half of it. Now that a rough figure has been put on the oil spill--something approaching 5 million barrels--the New York Times is having fun calculating the fines that could be levied, anything from $4.5 billion to $21 billion, depending on whether the spill is defined as an accident or the result of negligence, and whether the company gets credit for the 800,000 barrels skimmed off before it could spread through the Gulf of Mexico.

BP's market value yesterday was $123 billion, though it will no doubt drop a bit today. Perhaps it would be easier just to let the White House run the company through Chapter 11, split it into Good BP and Bad BP, and give the stock in the former to the workers. Mr. Obama claims a great success in having applied that formula to GM. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford