I usually don't watch much TV news. Today I managed to catch a few minutes of it. It underscores what I said before about the Mainstream Media (MSM) being incompetent rather than conspiratorial.
Exxon posted a higher profit today. The MSM reports are all breathless about this and mention it in the same sentence as "price gouging."
Demand for petroleum is rising and supply is relatively fixed. That makes prices and profits go up. It is very basic economics. Exxon's profit is up 7% from last year. Sounds pretty reasonable, but for the MSM even these simple concepts cause them to flounder.
The MSM sells information and analysis. If they can't handle something as simple as the Exxon story, then they deserve all the lower ratings they get.
I just find it rather odd that the price at my local station went up...hrm, 7.2% and the profits are up...well I'll be darned, 7%. They've gone up a few percentage points this quarter also, can't wait to see if their profits are up for this quarter also.
ReplyDeleteKattonic, thanks for the comment.
ReplyDeleteProfits would naturally follow price. They add a margin onto the cost of each gallong of gas. As the cost of producing gas goes up, in this case due to oil prices, they make more money.
You make more money per sale selling diamonds than oranges. There's nothing sinister about it.
Yes, but with record profits do they really need all those tax cuts?
ReplyDeleteThe real factor with gas prices isn't so much the cost of oil as the lack of adequate refining capacity. Every year at this time prices spike because of the seasonal switch from heating oil and winter gas blends to summer blends. It would be nice as a consumer to see some of these profits go into increasing refining capacity, but more capacity would lower prices and subsequently lower profits. The current system is broken. It is effectively a monopoly. There is no competition to drive down prices.