You are right that an unlimited liability cap would make these kinds of operations more risky for companies of all market caps. However, I contend that the fact that a company might go bankrupt is all the incentive it needs to make the effort to mitigate its risk as much as possible. The investment in safety equipment, disaster recovery plans, training, process improvement, and competent management is always going to be a fraction of the cost of responding to a catastrophic disaster like the one we have today. It’s Management 101—Risk Management.
It is incumbent on any company to protect their business from failing in a financially responsible manner. In this case, it seems pretty clear that BP upper management shirked their corporate responsibility, which is a huge Fail. Instead of spending a couple of hundred million on the items I mentioned above in order to reduce the risk of events like this happening, they now have to spend Billions to clean it up, thus putting them at risk of bankruptcy. In my view that puts the onus squarely on executive management.
As for BP actually walking away...let them. We can put their US operation in receivership and sell it off piece by piece to US companies (who will no doubt be more than happy to pick it up) and recover our tax dollars that way (as someone else suggested a couple posts above). Hopefully, the days of the bailouts are over, and we can look forward to the market regulating itself again.
That is undeniably true, but also consider that the Federal Government, who was supposed to be inspecting and overseeing BP's drilling operations failed miserably. 0bama's regime wants to lay this on the Bush Admin, but his people had 18 months to force corrections.
You don't suppose the fact that Rahm Emanuel live rent-free for years in BP owned property, or the fact that BP was a heavy contributor to 0bamao's campaign influenced the lack of code enforcement?