40 Billion

[PM Thor]

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g2bWhAvZxrryiRX8QnFU57pz3ctAD8UHLOKO0

Now, I am all for a free market and the whatnot, but $40.6 BILLION in profits for one year? That's just insane.

[American X]

What do you mean by insane?

These things do not happen by accident. They must make massive capital investments and possibly operate at a loss for years to have such 'windfall' profits.

[PM Thor]

Capital investments? Nah, there hasn't been any new refineries built in the US in decades (as an example). I highly doubt that any oil company has been hurting financially or been running a debt recently. Year after year the oil companies are breaking profitability records....just google it, Exxon is breaking its own records year after year....

Heck, where is the windfall-profit tax that was suggested years ago?

[XUglow]

Which is why they can afford to keep a friend of mine on a $1M per year "retainer". He does motivational speaking to the Exxon troops when they need him which is about 6 times per year from what I can figure. He mostly plays golf from Hawaii to Scotland or any place else he chooses.

Nice gig if you can get it.

[Stonebreaker]

I'm a capitalist pig, and that amount is insane. I wish it were my money.

[GoMuskies]

This is on $404 billion in revenue, so it's a 10% profit margin. That's not all that steep. They also paid $29.864 billion in income taxes, so perhaps we should be thanking them.

[Billy]

This is on $404 billion in revenue, so it's a 10% profit margin. That's not all that steep. They also paid $29.864 billion in income taxes, so perhaps we should be thanking them.

No, it's not a steep margin, but the volume involved obviously makes up for that in the case of Exxon.

I tend to be a laissez-faire sort of dude...so none of this really disturbs me. Considering gasoline is no more expensive now than it was in 1980 (after inflation adjustments), I've never really bought into this being much of a crisis.

But I also don't buy the oil companies excuse/copout regarding there being a shortage. If supply always meets demand, then there is no "shortage". It's not 1974...I haven't seen any fuel lines as an ordinary practice.

[XU 87]

In the late 70' and early 80's people were complaining about the excesss profits of the oil companies. Anyone remember Carter's windfall profit tax on oil companies?

But then 5-10 years later the price of oil dropped and some of these same companies lost money and some went out of business. I wondered then if the govt. would give back the funds they took 5-10 years earlier.

[Stonebreaker]

I simply say thank you. Because if we didn't have gas tomorrow, all of us would be in deep ........

[XUglow]

We should be thankful for the high prices because they give opportunity to innovation and new business.

We will become independent of big oil when alternatives beome profitable. In other words, we are just going to shift where the money goes. We have to get other places, and we are going to pay to do it.

BTW, when I first saw the title of this thread, I though it was either about the Microsoft offer for Yahoo or Santana's contract request to the Mets.