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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 (78960)	8/16/2006 12:28:34 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

None of the big oil companies controls a large percentage of the national refining capacity. If they did, and if they used it to artificially jack up prices to a large extent, than their margins would be much higher than about 10% for the industry and 11% for XOM. If they did it since 2000, than its surprising that that XOM's profit margin declined from 7.8% in 2000 to 6.4% in 2002. www2.barchart.com What level of profit margin do you need to be considered "gouging" in your opinion? If XOM was "gouging" in 2002 than almost everyone is gouging, or at least the average company is. The average profit margin of American companies over the last 25 years was over 8 percent and is currently over 10%, just barely lower than XOM's current margins and about the same as the profit margins for the Oil industry. If the oil industry is running some massive price-fixing scam they are certainly doing an awful job of it. Price-fixers who, during one of their best years in history, can't get their margins above the average for all industries. They must be very incompetent conspirators. BTW - Have you come up with a definition of "obscene profits" yet?