Tyranny At The Pump

NYTimes:

Exxon Mobil Corp. said Thursday it earned $10.36 billion in the April-June period, the second largest quarterly profit ever recorded by a publicly traded U.S. company.

The earnings figure was 36 percent above the profit it reported a year ago. High oil prices and the growing global appetite for fuel helped boost the company's revenue by 12 percent to a level just short of a quarterly record. Its shares briefly rose to a new high.

''We continue to see demand growth year over year,'' Henry Hubble, Exxon's vice president of investor relations told analysts. ''We're selling everything we can make.''

And as long as oil prices continue to climb, look for more record quarters, said Fadel Gheit, analyst for Oppenheimer & Co.

''The rising tide lifts all boats, including the biggest of them all. Unless there is a price collapse of oil, you will see the second half of the year best its first half,'' Gheit said.

Exxon Mobil's report comes as many drivers in the U.S. are paying $3 for a gallon of gas -- increasing the likelihood of further political backlash in Washington.
...
Exxon Mobil, the world's largest oil company by market capitalization, said earnings amounted to $1.72 per share in the second quarter compared with a profit of $7.64 billion, or $1.20 per share, a year ago.

The results topped Wall Street expectations but came in behind Exxon Mobil's record profit of $10.71 billion set in the fourth quarter of 2005.

A rising tide may raise all boats but unless you sail, you're not going to be able to afford to operate your craft and will have to leave it in its slip, then watch it get flooded.

Look, I think capitalism is groovy.  Record high, growing profits when regular Americans are being ravaged at the pump as real wages fall?  This is profit, mind you, not revenues--expenses for salaries, R&D, exploration and drilling, etc, are already accounted for.  Nothing more than unadulterated avarice, which is as dangerous to a free republic as any other form of tyranny.

ntodd

[Update: forgot that I wanted to post a bit from Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, which I cited in a post about Wal-Mart a few years ago:

[The rate of profit] is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin...As [merchants and master manufacturers'] thoughts...are commonly exercised rather about the interest of their own particular branch of business, than about that of the society, their judgment, even when given with the greatest candour (which it has not been upon every occasion) is much more to be depended upon with regard to the former of those two objects than with regard to the latter.

Now which Free Market Cultist is going to be the first to argue against their Patron Saint?]