2006-10-29

It's been a while since...

...I ranted. Not that one needs anything in particular to rant about. It could be something innocuous like bitching about the weather or as button pushing as bitching about the lefty Democrats who are going to ruin this country through their inability to understand basic economics and their propensity to spew vitriol-laden rhetoric anytime someone tries to use, get this, logic.

Nothing in particular is coming to mind for today's rant, so maybe I'll just go through my rant closet and write a little about each...

Where to start...

Red Sox fans? Nah, too easy.

Democrats? Nah, don't feel like writing "War and Peace."

Democrats and Gas Prices? By George, I think he has a topic!

Last Wednesday or Thursday, the Wall Street Journal ran a short editorial piece about gas pricing and oil pricing and Democrats and taxing wind-fall profits.* The basic gist of the editorial was that Ms. Nancy Pelosi and some of her other Democratic ninny friends believe, at least as shown through their actions, that shareholders of companies like Exxon-Mobil should be over-regulated and taxed into oblivion when times are good and thrown to the side of the road when times are bad. This all stems from "windfall profits" taxes that were being bandied about because Exxon-Mobile made a shitload of money. In fact, they made a metric assload of money a few quarters in a row. You know what I say? Good for them. Nobody really cared much about them when oil was $20 a barrel and we were paying $0.79 a gallon for gas.

However, now that the price of oil is up and consumer consumption is also up, the Dems want to punish these companies to taking advantage of the market. They're not actually taking advantage of the market. The market is just favoring them now. However, if, and this is a really big if, there is stability in the OPEC states and oil goes a dropping to $30 a barrel, a lot of these profits the oil companies are making will become a whole lot more modest. If they drop even further than that, earnings will look crappy. I really feel for the Exxon-Mobile shareholder...now where did I put my shares...

I actually saw gas on 1A next to Suffolk Downs for $1.95/gal for the 87 octane stuff. Too bad my car take Premium, that was around $2.30/gal - a whole lot better than the $3.20/gal I was paying 7 months ago. That hurt, that added like $14 to each fill-up. Wait, it only added $14 to each fill up? How often do I fill up? 3 times every two months? Shit, gas prices really don't directly affect me much. Now where did I put that Suburban...

--mike

* I actually clipped this particular editorial and pinned it to my cubicle wall along with a couple of other gems from the WSJ. I even made one of our Northeastern Co-Op Students read it. No, not to make her head spin...she's a righty, the only one on a college campus in Boston.

No comments: