Exxxon (yes there a three X's there, I know - figure it out) was given a four and a half BILLION dollar gift by the Bush-appointed majority in the Supreme Court last fall when it reduced the award for the corporation's criminal actions involving the operation of and bogus cleanup of the Exxxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. The company also was recording record profits during the days of $4.00 a gallon gasoline - some $40 billion+ per quarter. Though those profits have fallen as the American public stopped taking trips, the executives, you can bet, are hard at work trying to figure out how to increase them again.
One method is to cut production. So at a time when the stock market crash has cost each man, woman & child (theoretically, of course) $14,000 minimum, when the deficit is soaring, prices falling due to deflation, unemployment is higher than it's been in decades (7.2% this week), and the governments around the world are strapped for ideas and tools to actually DO anything to stop the downward spiral, what does OPEC do? Cut production to drive up the price of oil. Now that's neighborly, don't you think?
Instead, I have a novel idea. Actually, I heard it on BIll Meyer's talk show, but since no one else seems to be floating the idea, I thought I'd repeat it, if only to keep it alive. Why don't the oil companies chip in to bail out the auto industry? Why doesn't the government demand that they invest some of their amazing profits not into R & D or exploration (no more "Drill, Baby Drill"), but instead support green initiatives and more fuel-efficient cars, if for no other reason that it will prolong the demise of the planet long enough for them to continue making billions. Let the oil companies feast on our greed - they already are - but make them contribute to the solutions we need as well.
right on, right on!
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