Unbalanced and opinionated

Typical Wall Street Journal slant on the news.

BP PLC, under intense legal and political pressure from President Barack Obama, agreed Wednesday to put $20 billion into a fund to compensate victims of the Gulf oil spill, and said it would cancel shareholder dividends for the first three quarters of this year to offset that cost. BP said it would pay another $100 million to a separate fund to help oil-industry workers sidelined by the Obama administration's moratorium on deepwater drilling.

The payments far exceed the letter of U.S. law, which caps economic liabilities in oil spills at just $75 million. BP agreed to waive that limit. In a pact hammered out in a four-hour White House bargaining session, BP agreed to "set aside" $20 billion in U.S. assets as a guarantee that it would make good on the promised $20 billion in cash by 2013.

The deal is the latest in a series of interventions by the Obama administration in the operations of private businesses in crisis. Mr. Obama sent an emissary to demand that the then-head of General Motors Corp., Rick Wagoner, resign prior to the government-led rescue of GM. The administration has pressed Wall Street banks in the aftermath of the financial crisis, calling for sharp cuts in executive pay.

If GM was to receive taxpayer funds, the government had a legitimate right to write conditions on disbursing said funds. It is more than the Administration that has pressed for cuts in executive pay; Congress and the public have, too.