As YCharts reported, it appears BP will weather the storm. But BP shareholders would be right to suspect that a desperate seller won't necessarily get top price for the assets it's selling. Borrowing will grow more costly, as BP's credit ratings were downgraded and credit default swaps covering its debt traded at widened spreads. What's more, regardless of who's to blame for the Deepwater platform's sinking, BP is responsible for its own balance sheet. And, as Bloomberg BusinessWeek noted, BP's liquidity crunch was made even worse by the $37 billion it spent buying back its own shares in recent years, at what now seem highly inflated prices. BP Stock Chart by YCharts BP is far from alone. Prior to the financial collapse, companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 during an approximately four-year period spent $1.78 trillion buying their own shares.