The next thing, often before I even get my butt out of bed, is find the remote and turn on the viewscreen. Because I'm never quite certain what kind of mess the King may have created before 7:30 AM Central, or what he's about to screw up before noon.
In a way, we're lucky because once King George XLIII takes his lunch and cycle break he's usually done mucking up Planet Earth for the day.
Lately, though, his oil buddies have been trashing things all on their own.
Exxon/Mobil's profit for the most recent quarter was a whopping $8.4 BILLION.
But" the Wall Street "money for nothing" machine was unhappy because this fell $850 Million short of the $9.25 Billion profit it had predicted for America's oil equivalent of Godzilla.
Huh?
Now, who could possibly be unhappy about a corporation making a quarterly profit in excess of $8 Billion other than someone who does nothing with his or her life but count money.
One "expert" on CNN was trying to tell us not to blame Exxon/Mobil, or the other mega-billions profiteering oil companies, for the excessively high cost of gasoline. She claimed it was the fault of the suppliers, the OPEC nations, who set the price of crude.
We are supposed to feel sorry for the poor U.S. and British-based oil refiners, because they have to compete with new expanding markets in China and India and other emerging nations who now require far more oil than ever before. The OPEC guys just don't have the capacity to pump enough for everyone's demands.
Besides, these are global enterprises, whose profit and loss figures include operations around the world. Americans aren't paying the entire $8 Billion profit alone. They're only paying about $3 point 5 Billion of Exxon/Mobil's profit.
Without huge profits the oil companies won't be able to invest in research and development of new, alternative fuels.
-- But isn't that the reason Government extends massive tax breaks to big oil? -
Well, research is very expensive.
My answer to this gobbledy-gook is: So are the salaries and pension pay-outs to the greed-addicted corporate administrators, such as Lee Raymond, who made Exxon/Mobil the most profitable company in American history, then retired with a base package worth $400 Million.
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