Two interesting things happened last week

[garote]

Two interesting things happened last week.

1. Exxon Mobil announced the largest quarterly profit in U.S. corporate history, $11 billion dollars.

2. George Bush's disapproval rating reached %69, the highest rating in the history of modern polling. (Yes, worse than Nixon.)

Interesting times.

Comments

[sherrila.livejournal.com]

& we all know how i fucking feel about exxonmobil. mfs. RARRRR.

[thegoodreverend.livejournal.com]

I'm torn. On one hand, damn, that's a lot of money. On the other, they're a private company, and we pay what they charge, freely. On the other, if there's collusion going on, or government assistance, it's not cool at all.

As for Bush, I'm surprised it's only 69%...

[thegoodreverend.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Apparently I have three hands. Sorry, English language!

[garote]

That's why they call you the netsex king, my friend. :D

[garote]

As far as I can tell, they are both government subsidized and government regulated, but the regulations do not extend to oil prices. So if China is driving up demand and supply is lagging, the price goes up, collusion or no collusion.

The take-home lesson here is that the U.S. no longer needs to subsidize oil companies. ... And should instead subsidize solar power tech deployment.

Oil subsidies in the US are in the range of $20 to $55 billion per year (averaging and rounding off). The high end includes the military costs of "defending" Persian Gulf oil; the low end doesn't.

I wonder how useful a $30 billion dollar tax incentive or subsidy for solar-cell manufacturing would be, in both long-term efficiency and environmental quality... You invest that for four or five years straight, and suddenly the military has a lot less policing to worry about.

(It's thoughts like this that make me viciously bitter towards the military-industrial complex.)

[thegoodreverend.livejournal.com]

I'm equally bitter, and I didn't realize the levels of subsidies. The MIC is pretty central to the running of the government, unfortunately - that's unlikely to change, no matter who's running the place.

I've heard of a lot of advances in solar tech, and I firmly believe it's getting harder and harder to "bury" new advances, with the public's interest in green technology and the speed of internet information. Here's to hoping.

[conflictdswitch.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised assassinations aren't on the rise. It's getting to be a target rich environment.

I'd loved to have been there when George Bush's staff had to explain why he couldn't run again.

[robocowboy.livejournal.com]

The record-shattering of tomorrow... TODAY!

[graue.livejournal.com]

Another interesting thing that happened in April:

A self-released double album of untitled instrumentals (http://ghosts.nin.com/) hit #14 on the Billboard 200 (http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/retrieve_chart_history.do?model.chartFormatGroupName=Albums&model.vnuArtistId=5315&model.vnuAlbumId=12508).

Interesting times, indeed.