What BP Could Have Bought With All the Money They Lost [infographic]

From VisualEconomics.com “What BP Could Have Bought With All the Money They Lost” is a long, side-scrolling visual of some examples of what BP could have done with $100,000,000,000.  I like the use of photos to help tell the story, and it stands out from the crowd by scrolling to the side instead of down.

Two things I think are wrong about this one though.  Although all of the possible expenditures add up, the number values aren’t visualized in any way.  Also the $100,000,000,000 is the loss in stock market capitalization, not $3.5B in cash that BP has spent on recovery efforts.  It’s not actually money that BP has spent.

Comments

[Michael]

Alternative title...

"What BP could have bought (and easily still could buy) at literally any time"

[Alex Kerin]

As you mention, assuming most of the stock is held by the public, then it's really what the stock holders could have bought if they'd sold all of their stock before the spill, and then spent the difference on....

And, as Michael indicates, they could have spent $x billion on water, poverty,... but it's not as if they actually were going to.

[Kyyle]

Clearly they were never actually going to buy any of these things. The idea behind the chart is try to put this massive number into some sort of tangible form.

[infographics-inspiration]

I noticed that this infographic was extremely successful on social media. It went viral and from time to time it's re-appearing. People don't care about accuracy of numers. :)