Thin Ice

Deja vu all over again! The husband's workplace just layed off 245 more people today. 1400 two weeks ago, and 600 a few months ago. The newspaper reported a $9.7 million dollar loss for the company this quarter. That's 2245 jobs lost. They say some of the 225 production workers MAY be called back to work in a few months, but there are no guarantees. Those that did not lose their jobs will face multiple, sporadic, weeklong production shutdowns.

In other news Exxon Mobile posted an $11.68 BILLION dollar profit, which just happens to be the largest quarterly profit ever earned by a U.S. company.

Royal Dutch Shell also reported second-quarter earnings today, posting 33% higher profit of $11.6 billion.

USA Today reports:

"Oil prices are set on the open market, not by the oil industry. But that hasn't stopped public protests, a series of congressional grillings for top oil executives, and a failed attempt by lawmakers to slap Big Oil with a windfall profits tax.

In the first three months of this year, ExxonMobil Corp., the world's biggest publicly traded oil company, shelled out $8.8 billion on stock buybacks alone."

Stock buybacks essentially manipulate the market, to drive the value of the stocks higher.

I guess I should not be surprised that Congress/Lawmakers have done nothing about the obvious big oil price gouging, and billions of profit, but it is clearly one major factor in our failing economy.

I wonder if a similar situation is what really did the dinosaurs in???