SHADY MANEUVERING: An Offer BP Couldn’t Refuse. “Last night on CNN former Clinton Administration message man James Carville said: ‘It looks as if President Obama applied a little old-school Chicago persuasion to the oil executives.’ Making ‘offers you can’t refuse’ may be a great way to run the mob, but it is no way to run a country.” I agree. Let BP fail if its liabilities exceed its assets — don’t turn it into a government-controlled slush fund.

At the Financial Times it is observed that oil has become the new tobacco. But note that all the vilification of tobacco companies was really just about extracting a settlement that let greedy politicians get their hands on a stream of tobacco cash — which was then not spent as the politicians had promised.

UPDATE: A Tolkien analogy.