JOE BIDEN = SLUT FOR WALL STREET, OR ANYONE WITH A BIG BRIBE! JUST ASK THE SLUT HOW WELL HE DID OFF BLACKROCK!
VIDEO
Ralph Nader: Biden's First Year Proves He Is Still a "Corporate Socialist" Beholden to Big Business
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jTIUtjkDss&t=28s
Hauser also didn’t like the prevalence of Big Law talent on the Department of Justice team, which signaled to him that the Biden administration could go soft on corporate malefactors. Alexander Nazaryan
THIS POS LAWYER HAS NEVER OPENED HER FAT MOUTH THAT LIES DID NOT POUR OUT!
Democrats in Washington D.C., such as Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, have made noises about corporate “manipulation,” denouncing the handing over of billions of dollars to investors through share buyback programs instead of investing those funds in expansion or the hiring of more workers. Warren, who has repeatedly called herself a “capitalist to my bones,” has been working with the Biden administration on toothless legislation to tax share buybacks, which are expected to reach a record $1 trillion in 2022.
Record second quarter profits for US oil corporations
Exxon Mobil and Chevron reported record profits in the second quarter of 2022, as the two largest US oil monopolies cashed in on unprecedented year-over-year increases in oil and gas prices during the months of April through June.
Exxon, based in Irving, Texas, earned $17.9 billion in the quarter, more than three times what it earned in 2021, while Chevron, based in San Ramon, California, tripled its profits to $11.6 billion. Both companies nearly doubled year-over-year quarterly sales, with Exxon going from $67.7 billion to $115.6 billion and Chevron from $36 billion to $65 billion.
When added to the earnings of UK-based Shell, which announced record profits of $11.4 billion on Thursday, the three largest Western oil corporations raked in a collective $46 billion in the quarter. Industry analysts expect that when British Petroleum and the French oil company Total report quarterly earnings in the coming days, the five largest Western oil companies will have chalked up a combined quarterly record of $60 billion in profits.
There is perhaps no better demonstration of the deliberate policy of the ruling elite to attack the economic position of the working class than the price gouging of the oil companies—a major factor in the four-decade record inflation rate of more than 9 percent—combined with the Federal Reserve’s raising of interest rates to bring on a recession, drive up unemployment and undermine growing wage demands.
As the Wall Street Journal freely admitted, the historic profits are the result of oil companies and their investors exploiting both the economic downturn at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine that began last February.
The Journal reported on Friday following the Exxon and Chevron announcements: “Oil and gas demand has roared back as countries have lifted pandemic quarantine measures. Western sanctions against Russian energy have pushed commodity prices even higher. Now, as the US economy is contracting, the oil industry’s lofty earnings have become a rare bright spot for investors.”
The oil companies seized on the pandemic slowdown to cut more than 3 million barrels per day of oil refining capacity, while no new investment has been committed to update and expand the conversion of crude oil and other raw hydrocarbons into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other energy products.
The oil monopolies intend to ride this wave of massive profits derived from chiseling the public for as long as possible. As Exxon Chief Executive Darren Woods told the Journal, although refining margins have fallen off recently, it could take years to bring more capacity online. “Demand recovers, and we don’t have the capacity to meet that, which has led to record, record refining margins. This will be a few-year price environment,” Woods said.
It is the nexus of a tripling of the global price of oil—driven primarily by the US-NATO elimination of Russia as a supplier to the world market—and the return of demand for gasoline that has driven up prices at the pump to record levels.
Between April and June, the average American crude oil benchmark was about $109 a barrel, an increase of 64 percent over the same period a year ago, according to Bloomberg. Although the cost of a barrel of oil has fallen somewhat since then, the price as of Friday was still around $100.
Meanwhile, the price of a gallon of gas in the US reached a national average record of just over $5 on June 14. On Friday, the national average for gas was $4.26, which is more than 35 percent higher than it was at the beginning of August 2021.
Record industry profits have lifted the Wall Street performance of the oil giants during a period of downturn in the investment markets. The S&P 500 Energy index is up 35 percent since the beginning of the year, while the broader index has fallen by 15 percent since January. Shares of Exxon Mobil have shot up by 46 percent, while those of Chevron have risen by 26 percent.
Mark Stoeckle, chief executive and senior portfolio manager at Adams Funds, expressed energy investor euphoria to the Wall Street Journal, saying, “If you ignored energy for the last seven or eight years, you were paid handsomely for doing so. Now, the landscape has changed.”
The New York Times reported that shareholders are demanding that oil companies not spend money on expansion. Faisal A. Hersi, an energy analyst at Edward Jones, told the Times, “After years of overspending, these companies have found religion and are focused on capital spending discipline. They’re going to try to grow production at that 1 to 3 percent rate, which is an acceptable rate for investors as long as they’re able to increase cash returns.”
The Journal also said the oil companies have no plans to invest their record profits in new technologies in “the oil patch” but will stick with policies that “reward investors and strengthen their finances.” The five Western oil monopolies have spent a combined $20 billion in share buybacks since the beginning of the year, with plans to spend even more in the second half of 2022.
Chevron “lifted the upper end of its share-repurchase program this year to as much as $15 billion, up from $10 billion,” the Journal reported.
According to the New York Times, Exxon spent $6 billion on buybacks in the first half of the year and said on Friday it was “on track” with a plan for $30 billion in buybacks in 2022 and 2023, a target that it tripled once the present bonanza got going in the early months of the year.
Democrats in Washington D.C., such as Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, have made noises about corporate “manipulation,” denouncing the handing over of billions of dollars to investors through share buyback programs instead of investing those funds in expansion or the hiring of more workers. Warren, who has repeatedly called herself a “capitalist to my bones,” has been working with the Biden administration on toothless legislation to tax share buybacks, which are expected to reach a record $1 trillion in 2022.
The Fed's Urgent WARNING: Prepare for Economic Collapse
The Biden administration is leading the campaign to deny economic reality just as it is on COVID. At a press conference after the GDP figures were announced, Yellen said economists and most Americans had a definition of recession that included job losses and mass layoffs, private sector activity slowing considerably and “family budgets under immense strain,” and that is “not what we’re seeing right now.”
JOE BIDEN’S ‘GREEN AMERICA’ WHICH TRANSLATES TO MASSIVE PROFITS FOR BIG OIL. IT’S BIDENOMICS UP CLOSE!
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2022/06/corporatist-joe-biden-and-bid-oil.html
The top 25 oil corporations made a combined $205 billion in profits in 2021. Since the beginning of 2022, the five largest oil companies—Shell, ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron and ConocoPhillips—have enjoyed a 300 percent increase in profits over the first quarter of 2021. ConocoPhillips, for example, earned profits of $4.3 billion between January and March, an increase of 375 percent over the previous year.
VIDEO
Ralph Nader: Biden's First Year Proves He Is Still a "Corporate Socialist" Beholden to Big Business
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jTIUtjkDss&t=28s
Hauser also didn’t like the prevalence of Big Law talent on the Department of Justice team, which signaled to him that the Biden administration could go soft on corporate malefactors. Alexander Nazaryan
In an effort to burnish her “left” credentials in sections of the Democratic party, Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote an op-ed piece in the WSJ this week that partially lifted the lid on what is really taking place.
She noted that the aggressive rate hikes by the Fed are largely ineffective against the inflation spike and warned that the interest rate hikes were aimed at “dampening demand.” If the Fed hiked too much or too abruptly, she wrote, “the resulting recession will leave millions of people… with smaller paychecks or no paycheck at all.”
Warren pointed to the remarks of former Democratic treasury secretary Lawrence Summers, who recently told the London School of Economics: “We need five years of unemployment above 5 percent to contain inflation—in other words, we need two years of 7.5 percent unemployment or five years of 6 percent unemployment or one year of 10 percent unemployment.”
But always anxious to ensure that the working class remains corralled within the confines of the Democratic party, Warren praised the actions of the Biden administration and said it recognised that the US had “many tools for fighting inflation that wouldn’t make the economy smaller and Americans poorer.”
Such claims ignore two facts: that the limited measures of the administration will do little or nothing to bring down prices, and that Biden has declared he stands four-square behind the actions of the Fed.
Elizabeth Warren Seemingly Blames ‘Big Corporations’ for Current State of Economic Affairs
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is setting her focus on “big corporations” rather than Democrat policies as Americans grapple with 41-year high inflation and experience two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth.
“It’s time for Congress to do its part to get our economy on a sounder footing, and the Inflation Reduction Act would do exactly that—bringing down costs for families and stopping giant corporations with massive profits from skipping out on the bill at tax time,” Warren said on Thursday:
She followed up with a similar sentiment on Friday, placing the blame on “big corporations” in a tweet to her 6 million Twitter followers.
“When giant corporations have all the power, they wriggle their way out of paying taxes. They gobble up smaller competitors. They jack up prices just because they can. I’m fighting to put power in the hands of working people, where it belongs—and I’m in this fight all the way,” she added:
Warren’s remarks coincide with news of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) shrinking 0.9 percent in the second quarter this year, marking two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth under Democrat leadership — a reality many use as a marker for a recession:
The economy contracted by 1.6 percent in the first quarter. Many Americans consider two straight quarters of recession to be the marker of a recession. Economists, however, rely on the determination of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) to say when a recession starts. The NBER has a more complex and subjective definition of recessions and typically does not declare a recession until several months after it has begun.
Like President Biden, Warren appears to be wilfully ignoring the impact Democratic policies have had on the economy during their reign in Washington, DC, over the last year and a half — from dismantling American energy independence to spending trillions of dollars:
This is not the first time the Massachusetts Democrat has rerouted blame for the current state of economic affairs. Earlier this month, Warren blamed 41-year high inflation on Russian President Vladimir Putin, the coronavirus, and corporate monopolies:
No comments:
Post a Comment