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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (78423)	7/27/2006 6:32:05 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

Exxon and their ilk CONTROL the world market, you BS artist. Quick quiz. Who controls the oil wells in Saudia Arabia? In Iran? In Russia? In Mexico? In Venezuela? In Kuwait? Sure they commission home countries where they drill In those countries and more the government or a government controlled company controls the oil. In a number of them the government controlled company extracts the oil itself and sells it on the world market. In a few the government considers itself the owner of the oil ("yes its mine I stole it fair and square") and pays oil companies a fee to extract it. In neither case do oil companies get oil for anything close to production costs. They pay full market rates or at least close to it if they want the oil. but I am including in the BUSH-CHENEY AXSIS OF GOUGING the Saudi Arabians, the Kuwaitis, the Iraqi oil ministery and many more. If you get all the national oil companies together in your conspiracy they don't need Bush or Exxon-Mobil. They control the lions share of the worlds oil. If they cut production the price goes up. The downside of that for them is that they are not selling as much oil, and that if they manage to keep the oil price high it suppresses economic growth and encourages oil alternatives thus reducing demand over time. For these reasons there is a limit to how much excess profits they can get, but if you are looking for some "axis of gouging" your best bet would be OPEC. They at least are an actual cartel, even if an imperfect and non-total one. Also, I defy you to show us how the price of production and refining has gone up so much that they have to double the price of gasoline. Your attacking a straw man. I never said or implied that the main reason for the increase in price is an increase in oil production and refining costs. I just pointed out that the costs have actually increased so your statement that they are just the same is false. These increases are not the main reason we are paying more at the pump. Higher world wide demand is the main reason. Increase demand without increasing supply and you increase costs. Other reasons include taxes and requirements for new formulations of gasoline (largely for environmental reasons), tightness in refinery capacity, conflict in the middle east, inflation (the real price now is similar to what we paid in the early 80s, another high point), and the fact that prices had been unusually low in real terms before the increases over the last few years. if you think 40 billion a year is only "good but nbot great" profits The nominal dollar amount of the profits says next to nothing about whether the profits where good or not. If one company is ten times as large as another, but has profits only 5% bigger its profitability is low. One good measure is profit margin, another is return on equity, perhaps not quite as good but sometimes used is profit per employee. Exxon-Mobil isn't exceptional in any of these areas, even now when times are relatively good in this cyclical industry. Exxon Mobil is just big. Big companies often make big profits (and if they don't there stock doesn't do to well), but not always good margins. You like using Exxon Mobil as an example because it gives you a big number. You wave the number around like a flag, thinking it will distract people from any serious thought. But XOMs margins are only slightly better than the industry as a whole, and much lower than the margins in some other big industries. And it's not about supply, it's about jacking up the prices while Bush-Cheney are in power and sometimes creating artificial shortages. You contradict yourself. The only way to create artificial shortages is to restrict supply. Well I guess you could also subsidize demand but there isn't much of that going around, at least not new subsidies, or very direct ones. But your right it isn't mostly about supply. Supply has not dropped. Its about demand. Demand has increased. From China and India developing, to more people, with more cars per person, and more miles driven per car, and heavier vehicles in the US. Bush and Cheney didn't make people buy SUVs or drive more, they didn't cause India and China to demand more oil. You grant them far more power than they have. Its almost like how primitive people would think that a witch or an evil god hexed them when some misfortune happened. They had to have someone to blame. Apparently so do you. Tim