Hayward Leaves Oily Footprints in Congress Today
Today BP CEO Tony Hayward took a seat in front of Congress to answer a couple questions. In fact, he answered less than a couple of questions. Generally speaking, he apologized for the oil spill and loss of life but, according to him, he didn't have much to do with it himself.
Tony Hayward, partially to his credit, is focused on getting the oil spill taken care of and learning from mistakes so it doesn't happen again in the future. To Mr. Hayward's discredit he restated that position for a better future very often in response to yes or no questions regarding cost cutting decisions made by BP when first creating the Deep Water Horizon oil rig.
California Democratic Representative Henry Waxman discovered CEO Tony Hayward doesn't need to be very involved in the drilling of a new oil well.
Vermont Democratic Representative Peter Welch reinforced the point that as CEO Tony Hayward also doesn't need to understand what people working for him actually do in order to run the company.
The Associated Press reports Tony Hayward made $4.7 million as CEO of BP in 2009. $4.7 million and by all accounts given to Congress today he doesn't really need to know how to do much other than initiate investigations and wait for the findings.
Texas Republican Representative Joe Barton had enough with the United States government's inappropriateness in addressing the corporation BP unfairly. Representative Barton feels BP is being held up for money and aren't being dealt with nicely by President Barack Obama.
This corporation, BP, qualifies as one of the richest countries in the world.
It is absolutely fascinating how little someone needs to know in order to be CEO at a major corporation like BP. With more money than India, Russia and Israel combined, one major difference between BP and those countries is the possession of nuclear weapons.
Thought exercise:
What does it means when a single corporation has the resources to push 10 of the 20 richest countries in the world all in?
What kind of power does such a position in the world bring?
Should a corporation be allowed to make more money than the country where the corporation is recognized?
It is amazing how little blame CEO's accept compared to how much money they get paid. But then if there wasn't a greedy need for oil, there would not be a greedy scramble to be the ONE to fill that need and soak up the money. I heard on the news that people are angry at BP and to me that is like "what??" You are the ones that demand the oil and the benefits it produces and then you get mad when something goes wrong!! Good food for thought!
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BP is just part of the symptom. The problem is the corporations in general. I refuse to believe that a CEO's job is really all that difficult in light of all the perks they get. You basically organize setting up a staff of the smartest people in the company. You let them tell you what to do and then decide which one makes sense. In companies this large, the CEO doesn't really need to anything other than give orders. There are plenty of people around to do the real work. The amount of money some CEO's make is borderline obscene. There should be some type of parity, I think, between how much a CEO makes compared to the lowest paid person in their organization.
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