CORPORATISM - LOOKING GLASS NEWS | |
Oil Industry Worried It Has Too Much Cash |
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by Dave Sirota Sirotablog Entered into the database on Friday, April 29th, 2005 @ 02:36:37 MST |
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Exxon's "soon-to-retire CEO suddenly has a new anxiety: how to spend
the windfall wrought by $55-a-barrel oil. By the end of April, Exxon will have
a cash hoard of more than $ 25 billion. And if crude prices stay where they
are, this geometrically growing bonanza could soon give Exxon more cash on hand
than any other U.S. company...the cash is building at a remarkable rate. Each
dollar jump in the price of a barrel of oil adds another half billion in earnings.
Based on current prices, Exxon is accumulating more than $1 billion a month
- even after allocating for dividends, share repurchases, and capital spending.
If oil simply stays where it is now, Exxon's cash could approach $40 billion
in 12 months. By then [Exxon's CEO] is expected to have handed off the top job--and
the headache of what to do with all that cash." Let me repeat that: Exxon and the oil industry have gouged Americans so much,
that they now say they have a problem because they have too much cash. Yet,
President Bush has yet to mention a single word about industry price gouging.
That's what oil industry money buys more than anything: White House complicity
when companies shamelessly rip off average citizens. |