steve yerrid, let me start with you. can the government under current law compel bp to start an escrow fund? >> well, ray, we're clearly on new land right now, a frontier that was created after the valdez oil spill. what i think they're going to do is premise it upon the responsible party connotation and the oil pollution act which was passed in 1990 which makes the responsible party liable for all the damages and the clean-up. what they want to do now is front-end that and put it in a trust fund to get away from bp looking like an oversight entity and put it on the government, a government we can trust a lot better than we can trust an oil company. >> suarez: daniel farber, you're familiar with what's in that federal oil protection act. is there a mechanism in there for the government to say, you must create an escrow fund? >> well, i'm having a little trouble seeing that. certainly it's true that at the end of the day victims can go to court and sue. and bp also has to have a mechanism for processing claims before that