Exxon has just reported the highest profits in history. Today CNN Money estimates that the company earned $1485.55 a second from April through June of 2008. That’s clear profit, not gross income.
At this rate Exxon alone could pay the US President’s annual salary in roughly two and a quarter minutes. Two four-year terms could be bought in under 20 minutes.
In slightly over four days Exxon could match the campaign budgets of both Barack Obama and John McCain.
Even so, the same CNN report states that Exxon fell short of Wall Street’s expectations.
The obscenity of all this news is numbing.
More appalling yet is that, if Exxon could maintain this rate of profitability and contributed every cent of profit towards the US federal debt, we’d still be in debt twenty years from now, thanks to the Bush administration, who in 2001 inherited a surplus OVER TWENTY TIMES the amount of Exxon’s second quarter profits.
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Follow the URLs to check my math:
http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/31/news/companies/exxon_profits/index.htm?cnn=yes
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/index.php
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/10/24/budgetsurplus.ap/index.html
I woke up to Exxon's news on the radio, and the stats simply beggared belief.
ReplyDeleteThe other radio item that beggared belief was a "Marketplace" essay about grassroots efforts to save Starbucks across the country in the face of the corp.'s first report of a loss. The essayist was musing that perhaps it was a sad indictment against Americans that what constituted "community" worth saving were these overrepresented corporate retail outlets [that serve crap coffee, I might add].
He asked:
Can you imagine a similarly widespread Save Our Library campaign, for instance? Or have we reached the point that the most important symbols of community strength are, in fact, publicly traded megacorporations? I guess we'll have to let the market sort that one out.
Nothing like a library that serves the public good would ever seem worthy of government assistance in the eyes of the present administration ... or, sadder still, of many Americans. The nation is infected with greed. In its fevered delusions, it imagines democracy and liberty as nothing more than brand names.
ReplyDeleteIn its fevered delusions, it imagines democracy and liberty as nothing more than brand names.
ReplyDeleteIn this way, we are closer to China and the modern Chinese than we know.