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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (288015)	5/14/2006 4:48:18 PM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 1571405

8% is not obscene moron

To: American Spirit who wrote (288015)	5/15/2006 1:26:51 AM
From: Elroy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571405

They lied in 2000 when they said they'd jawbone OPEC to bring down prices. They had the opposite plan in mind. And they succeeded. What's this? Are you calling Bush-Cheney a great American success story?

To: American Spirit who wrote (288015)	5/16/2006 8:40:23 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571405

Exxon's profit margins are obscene. By what metric? The only Profit Margin [PM] they exceed is their industry average. The average for the refinery industry is 8.6%; for XOM its 9.71%.......a small differential certainly explainable by greater cost efficiencies on the part of XOM. The average PM for the sector is 13.5%. The average PM for the S&P is 13.96%. If XOM's profits are obscene to you, what must the profits look like in the industry sector or the companies in the S&P? Bottomline: by any industry metric, XOM's profits are not "obscene". Of course they cook their books to make their profits seem less enormous. If you believe that to be true, I strongly recommend you contact the SEC and report them under Sarbanes-Oxley. As we all know, there are many ways of doing that. But the fact remains that this year Exxon made the fattest profits ever in the history of mankind. Yes, they've had a good year.........demand has been high allowing them to run their refineries full blast 24/7. And we Americans are not using much more gasoline, or is there any less supply than there was five years ago when gasoline was selling for $1.50. That's not true. Americans are using more gas. They tend to cut back when gas prices spike up but then resume their normal practices when the price comes back down. Regarding the supply, as of late, its been problematical at best. There is the ongoing problem of having refineries run at 95% or greater capacity......never a good thing in the longer term because it allows refinery outages to have a bigger impact on the gas or heating oil markets. Plus, we are converting to a new formula of gasoline using ethanol........and that's been a big headache.