"Hayward's tenure as chief executive officer is ending for obvious reasons. He mishandled events in the Gulf of Mexico after the explosion at Deepwater Horizon and committed gaffes that inflamed U.S. public opinion. If BP is to regain its business footing in the U.S., it needs a new public face."

"This is the basic issue in an important political story which has mushroomed over the past week. If he was lying intentionally, that would raise questions of character and be an important campaign issue. If he made an unintentional mistake, that would be of far less consequence, especially given 30 years of distinguished public service with exemplary personal conduct (whatever one's views on particular issues or cases)."

"How to stop the gusher of oil and minimize the damage from the spill are still the key top-of-mind issues following the explosion and fire at the Deepwater Horizon drill rig. But right behind are a broad range of questions about what happened and what are the implications---questions about the risk of deep sea drilling, the systems and processes to prevent accidents, the default systems if an accident occurs, the readiness to act if that accident is catastrophic, where lines should be drawn between public and private responsibility and, given the risks, the role of deep sea drilling off our shores in America's energy future."

"Goldman must defend itself against charges when it believes that it acted lawfully with respect both to making a market for synthetic CDOs (the SEC complaint) and to hedging for balance sheet protection by going short as its long real estate positions started to deteriorate (the subject of much of the Senate hearing). This defense will take place over many months as the investigatory and enforcement processes unfold slowly. But Goldman should immediately and simultaneously follow a second path: it must argue with equal force and visibility about its vision of what is the "right thing to do" in the financial services industry going forward."

"Goldman's problem, as it faces an energized pounding from Congressional and SEC investigators, is being credible on that critical distinction for regulators, customers and the public: What it did in the past may have been "legal" under past standards and consistent with industry practice but a different standard of "what is right" should apply in the future."

"In most industries, strong safety regulation is a necessary condition to a culture of safety inside a business, but it is not sufficient. Without the deep commitment of top leadership to performance with safety, the essential safety culture will not exist."

"But Greenspan's arrival at the regulatory party is one of the last pieces of a bipartisan consensus that significant regulatory reform to ensure the safety and soundness of the financial system is necessary -- and is likely to be enacted this year."

"President Obama has committed the prestige of the United States, his personal credibility, billions of taxpayer dollars and, most importantly, the lives of American military personnel to a war which depends — as his top generals, Petraeus and McChrystal have said — on attaining a key civilian, not military, objective: creating an Afghan state with security, order, rule of law and accountable institutions that protects and serves its people. That goal depends on defeating the corruption and instability which have plagued Afghanistan for centuries."

"Google is not the first company to resolve the conflict between country law and company ethics in favor of ethics. But its highly publicized decision will make companies operating around the globe sensitive to the importance of seeing clearly, before others do, the potential collision of law and ethics and of thinking ahead about how to resolve them in light of company values and stakeholder -- not just shareholder -- pressures."

"I am not a Catholic, but I am a student of accountability in major institutions. As a matter of principle, I do not understand why the practices of corporations, whose main objectives are material, to assess and fix accountability should be more direct and robust than the practices of the Church, whose objectives are ethical and spiritual."