I just read something on the local TV web site that actually got me to leave a comment to it, reproduced below:
Please...I find most of this "analysis" pretty shallow. For one, higher oil prices would equate to higher revenue, NOT higher PROFITS unless Big Oil is doing a bit of light GOUGING. This is because it's a percentage game - big companies are rated not on dollar figures but on percentage increase figures, that is why profits are at all time highs - it's all about the percentages and stock price. This is the truth behind our economic system, not that competition keeps prices down.

Secondly, why does everyone always think the stock market is the answer to everything? Buying stock in big corporations that spend more money than the average American will see in a lifetime on lobbying congress to get favorable treatment is just not a good answer. And how much stock could the average American afford to buy? Not enough to offset their struggling week-to-week.

Please, don't insult us, we've done enough to ourselves as a nation by being unwilling to demand a government independent of corporate America.

 

I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!

I don't want to sound like a broken record by bringing up Big Oil again, but I just read a piece on the ABC News website about Big Oil profits, and it ends with a pretty entertaining quote:
" ... The oil companies are "broadly owned by tens of millions of
middle-class Americans, anyone with a pension plan or 401(k) or IRA
account, a mutual fund," Dougher said. "They're really the owners. So,
when their stock portfolios go up, that's really who benefits." ..."

So it's not the execs that are worth scores of millions of dollars in their own company's stocks that really benefit from Big Oil profits, or who really own the companies. It's Average Joe America who can retire on his few thousand dollars of Exxon stock. It's Average Joe America who decides for Exxon which candidates to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars wooing and courting favors from.
Next time I'm filling up at the pump, I'll have the satisfaction of knowing that I'm just investing in my own future.
Give me a break, not billions of dollars in tax breaks to Big Oil.

Is it five o'clock yet?