Nobody is saying they shouldn't make money. There is a huge difference between making a profit and price gouging everybody on the planet!

I don't know why anybody would leap to the defense of an oil company after an announcement like that! I guess you would work for an oil company if your post is any guide? Or maybe you have some kind of vested interest in oil?

 

They are far from gouging anyone. Read my post again. They only made a 10% profit.
I am not in the oil busines or have a vested interest in the oil business, I sure wish I did though. I am just a typical electrical contractor and I know I wouldnt want anyone telling me how much money I would be allowed to make. That seems to me what alot of you are saying here. How would you determine when profits are to high? Would it only be oil companies? Who would get the excess profits? This just opens up a can of worms that would not be fair to some companies. One thing that should happen is the gov should take away the oil companies tax incentives/breaks.

 

It's amazing how you could justify the profit by resorting to percentages. I don't care that it's 10%. NO company in this corporate world makes a $40B profit unless they are taking advantage of people.

FWIW, if GM made a 5% profit per vehicle, that would be a massive windfall!

 

Using percentages is not "justifying" the profit; that is simply how profit is measured. It's a way to describe how much return you're getting on the money you invest.

Don't think of it as $40 billion, think of it as thousands of individual investors (owners) of Exxon, each making a reasonable return on the money they invested. Should each of these individual investors accept less profit than those who in invested in, say, Coke or Microsoft, simply because in aggregate their profit adds up to a very large number? No, that would be foolish.

GM's annual sales are in the neighbourhood of $200b per year (although not all of it is vehicle sales of course). So if they made 5% profit overall, that's $10 billion. Not all that "massive".

 

10% is just the tax reported to the IRS, not the real profit. That is the great thing about owning/controlling a business, you can buy a lot of things tax free. No smart executive buys a car, they all lease company cars. Same goes for travel and expensive dinners. All paid for with pre-tax dollars.

 

Interestingly, your customers *DO* tell you how much you are allowed to make, because there is an open, competitive free market for your services. I don't see that with oil. Barriers to entry are incredibly high, and inextricably linked to various foreign (and unfriendly) governments, so we don't have a lot of options right now. That's the glaring difference to me.

I don't begrudge ExxonMobil for making their 10%. I'd like to have more options for energy besides "drive less," so that I could decide how much of my money I'd like to give them.

Todd

Disclaimer- I probably hold a bit of EM stock in the various large-cap mutual funds I own, if that matters.

 

They are all a bunch of shiesters (especially ExxonMobil) and DON'T care about the economy, they dont care about the little guy who can't afford to get to work or go to the store or who (like me) can't afford to heat their home. They could care less. As long as they get their profits **** on everyone else

 

If there was only a way I could buy a piece of these big bad oil companies, so I too could profit from their success. I love how Americans want to punish those who succeed nowadays, especially in a market as volatile as oil.

 

Energy isn't the same as other industries. No one would care if GM or Apple made huge money, but when it comes to things that people need to live like energy, food, water, etc.. they get pissed.

In a way Americans are to blame for not taking the warnings of the 70's more seriously. We should be energy independent by now and instead we are more dependent then ever of enemy nations and multinational companies for energy.

 

Americans only want to punnish those who succeed when they "succeed" at the expense of the rest of the nation. We're not all fat, dumb, happy, and lazy as most (NOTICE I DIDN'T SAY "ALL"?) Businessmen in America think we are. We're just not as greedy, unethical, and lacking integrity

 

Amazing that people will go out and spend $100 on a pair of jeans with maybe $2.00 invested, but bitch about oil companies who invest $400 billion to make $40 billion.

I think the numbers sound as sick as anyone else, but even sicker is the idea of investing $400 BILLION (or thereabouts) in one year to get that.

I wonder what the profit margins are for Microsoft? Apple? Abercrombie and Bitch? Starbucks? Ben & Jerry's? How much does Samsung or Sony make selling the fancy $1500 - $5000 TV sets? Meanwhile GM is squeaking by to make a billion or so on $200 billion in revenue, and people want to suck every last cent out of the price of the car and get the dealer's and Wagoner's firstborns before they buy it.

I'm not saying the oil biz is squeaky clean (nor am I any sort of economic expert), but seriously... there are shenanigans in every business (just like in every government agency).

 

If anyone has any proof of price gouging, I'd sure like to hear it.

With demand up all over the world as developing industrial nations like China and India start putting more cars on the road, the demand for gasoline has risen multiple times since the days of $1/gallon fuel.

Now, combine this with the fact that current law makes it almost impossible to drill in alternative places or build new, modern refineries with higher capacities -- and we're getting exactly what should be expected. I would imagine the cost to pull oil out of the ground and refine it is relatively fixed -- but if you're struggling to keep up with demand, you charge a lot more for it. Hence massive profits.

I know I'm coming across as a "Big Oil" guy, but I certainly have no love for what is happening, believe me. I'm just wondering what everyone thought 15-20 years ago when gasoline was ridiculously cheap and we were conditioned to believe it would always be that way, while oil company stocks were basically in the toilet.

 

Heh, great point! If the jeans makers weren't "gouging" us a new pair of Levis should only cost $2-$3.

Freudian slip there?

 

about what I was going to say. The problem is US..not them..why? were just going to go to the pump and pay..no matter what..
If we started investing in the company that is turning the the E85 into reality faster than other companies then we will have something to fight this "profit" against.

 

If you hate big oil for making money, why not buy stock? I don't get it why people hate companies for making money. BTW your "need" has nothing to do with a company's charity. Price is not based on what people feel is too much or too little, its based on supply and demand. If you are paying $3 a gallon, then that is the price and thus the value agreed upon.