Sunday, February 3, 2008

Remind me, why is that again?

Beating its own record to rack up the largest annual corporate profit in American history, Exxon Mobil Corp. said yesterday it earned $40.6 billion for the year, reaping the benefits of crude oil prices around $100 a barrel.
Benefits, huh? When their major cost goes up, their profit goes up? Yeah, sure, price changes can show the impact of increased demand, and that demand is inelastic. Exxon Mobil just bumps up its bite, too. Corporations exist to price-gouge; that's what this is.

Forty billion dollars will buy a lot of politicians. Or a lot of gasoline:
The annual profit was enough, at $3 a gallon, to buy nearly four 15-gallon fill-ups for the roughly 243 million registered passenger vehicles on American roads.
Update: Beth Cravens cartoon - click image for full cartoon.

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