Wednesday, May 21, 2008

"Greed"?

I made the mistake tonight of watching the evening "news". It seems that the price of light sweet crude oil closed today at just under $134.00/bbl. Whoopti doo! The usual suspects in the US senate took the opportunity to AGAIN summon the oil company executives before the judiciary committee to berate them for "obscene" profits and the price of motor fuel. Is it possible that these politicians do not understand the difference between "profit" and "profit margin"? Or alternatively do they in fact understand the difference and assume that Joe government "school" graduate does not?

The oil companies are forced to BUY crude oil from OPEC and other GOVERNMENTS who own 90% of the planets oil reserves in order to refine it to sell to motorists. When they must pay $134.00/bbl for crude and at the same time maintain a profit margin of 10-12% the profit in absolute terms is going to go through the roof. DUH!

And yet the same politicians who have been the most obstructive in limiting the supply of our energy sources by placing proven domestic reserves of oil off limits while world demand is skyrocketing are the most vocal at decrying the run up in the cost of gasoline. .

Take just over nine minutes to view this video in order to better understand the real greed is that of politicians.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thomas Sowell is really somthing. He continually seems to "get it right" over and over again.

By the way, does it piss anyone else off when people make statements like "the US voter does not understand becase it is too complex?" It feels more than a little condescending, like we are a bunch of dim-witted dullards being led about by an enlightened political class that "knows better."

From my view, this couldn't be further from the truth. in fact, it is almost just teh opposite. Despite their machinations and desires to be "in control", the market, driven by US, just keeps on rumbling along, doing exaclty what it pleases, despite their bloviations.

Goober