CORPORATISM - LOOKING GLASS NEWS
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Oil Industry Worried It Has Too Much Cash
by Dave Sirota    Sirotablog
Entered into the database on Friday, April 29th, 2005 @ 02:36:37 MST


 

Untitled Document President Bush has spent a lot of time lately pretending that energy prices are skyrocketing for every reason except the real one. He falsely claims his energy bill will solve the problem. He claims its about supply. But take a look at this little snippet from Fortune Magazine and you will see how this is nothing more than energy industry price gouging. As the magazine notes:

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.