Exxon made $19 billion in profit and got a $150 million tax rebate in 2009
by Gaius Publius on 5/16/2011 09:05:00 PM
We've been on this for a while, these extractive industry profits, but this Rachel Maddow segment makes it all so clear. We give them the store so they can sell it back to us.
"The U.S. government currently hands out $4 billion dollars per year in subsidies" to the most profitable corporations in the history of the planet (1:35 in the clip). Nice.
I'll say again - "We" (Americans) don't have domestic oil, because "we" don't have a nationalized oil industry. "Our oil" is actually their oil: Exxon's oil, or Shell's, or Chevron's. They own it. "We" just give them permission to extract it from the ground.
From there "our oil" goes onto the world market, where "we" bid against everyone else on the planet for the right to own it again.
We give them the store so they can sell it back to us. And don't let that nice pant-suited lady from the oil advertisements tell you otherwise. Her name is Brooke Alexander, and she's used to playing con artists; she played one on As The World Turns before her oil industry gig.
(By the way, and apropos of nothing I've already said, it will be interesting to see what Sen. Schumer (3:45 in the clip) actually does with that committee of his.)
GP