Here we go again, record profits by US oil companies

And one wonders why we're still paying $2.50 or more per gallon of gasoline in New York (check out the prices in Westchester localities, like White Plains, Irvington, Rye, Scarsdale, etc.). This shit just pisses me the hell off. I mean, as you may recall, was it not Exxon Mobil who posted record profits for any US company last year, as well? One might think that these oil companies would lower their gasoline prices but, noooooo, they have to keep posting record profits for any US company in history, year after year.

One might think that technology companies would be the ones posting record profits, or high profits, given today's tech-driven society. However, it's all about the oil companies, the hungry, greedy, bastardous oil companies, for whom we have gone to war in Iraq.

Exxon Mobil Corp. Thursday reported the biggest annual profit on record for a U.S. corporation - earning more than $75,000 every minute of 2006 on the back of record oil prices. The world's biggest publicly traded company by revenue posted net earnings of $39.5 billion on revenue of $377.6 billion last year, topping its previous profit record.

(emphasis supplied) Unfortunately for the tech sector, the first entry by any US company is IBM, ranked 10th on the Fortune 500, in terms of revenue/profit/etc. Technology barely made an entry in to the top 10 -- how astounding is that? I mean, it's usually retail, pharmaceuticals, and technology, right? Hell, Exxon Mobil managed to knock WalMart off the #1 spot, in a mere two years. I wonder if someone can pull up the Fortune 100 from the year 2000 and see where all these companies ranked. It would be interesting to see, don't ya think? Actually, I can put that together relatively easily:

2000

1. General Motors
2. Wal-Mart Stores
3. Exxon Mobil
4. Ford Motor
5. General Electric
6. Intl. Business Machines
7. Citigroup
8. AT&T
9. Altria Group
10. Boeing
    

2006

1. Exxon Mobil (XOM)
2. Wal-Mart Stores (WMT)
3. General Motors (GM)
4. Chevron (CVX)
5. Ford Motor (F)
6. ConocoPhillips (COP)
7. General Electric (GE)
8. Citigroup (C)
9. American Intl. Group (AIG)
10. Intl. Business Machines (IBM)

So we can now see that in the year 2000, Exxon Mobil was in the top 10, but they were the only oil company there. In the year 2006, three of the top ten are oil companies. In 2000, three of the top ten were technology companies (AT&T, GE, IBM). In 2006, only one. So technology and oil have flip-flopped in the span of just over the duration of the Iraq war. Interesting, very interesting ....