President Biden did not hold back on the price-gouging & profiteering oil corporations. And he will let them pay for it.
Biden admonishes the oil corporations.
President Joe Biden all but declared war on the oil companies, and justifiably so. He will let them pay for not producing on the 9,000 leases they are hoarding.
The president wants corporations to start up their idled wells and increase production to supplement the lost production from Russia. He said many corporations, as we all know, are exploiting the situation to milk the population for ever-expanding profits.
“But some companies have been pretty blunt,” Biden said. “They don’t want to increase supply because Putin’s price hike means higher profits. Once, he even acknowledged that they don’t care if the price of a barrel of oil goes to $200 a barrel. They’re not going to step up the production. I say enough, enough of lavishing excessive profits on investors and payouts and buybacks. When the American people are watching. The world is watching. U.S. oil companies made nearly $80 billion in profit last year, and this year those profits are expected to continue to soar. This is the time, not the time, to sit on record profits. It is time to step up for the good of your country, the good of the world, to invest in immediate production. That we need to respond to Vladimir Putin to provide some relief for your customers, not investors and executives.”
One should not doubt that gasoline and energy prices are not a supply problem but a choice by CEOs and Wall Street to pilfer Americans. Here is an excerpt from a Bloomberg article.
Crude prices hurtling toward $100 a barrel typically would spark a frenzy of new drilling by independent explorers in shale fields from the desert Southwest to the Upper Great Plains — but not this year. Influential players like Pioneer Natural Resources Co., Devon Energy Corp. and Harold Hamm’s Continental Resources Inc. just pledged to limit 2022 production increases to no more than 5%, a fraction of the 20% or higher annual growth rates meted out in the pre-pandemic era. …
“Whether it’s $150 oil, $200 oil, or $100 oil, we’re not going to change our growth plans,’’ Pioneer Chief Executive Officer Scott Sheffield said during a Bloomberg Television interview.
We get these cycles in our economy where oil companies and pharmaceutical corporations gouge the American people because of the willful ignorance of too many good politicians. They continue to claim they are capitalist. They believe that the behavior of corporations is anathema to capitalism.
“Look, I’m a capitalist. I have no problem with corporations turning a good profit,’ Biden said. “But companies have an obligation that goes beyond just their shareholders to their customers, their communities, and their country. No American companies should take advantage of a pandemic or Vladimir Putin’s actions to enrich themselves at the expense of American families.”
President Biden and many Democrats fundamentally fail to heed the design of our economic system. These corporations are doing nothing wrong. They are fulfilling their task. The only stakeholders that matter to them are the shareholders and executives. Milton Friedman, several decades ago, gave them their marching orders. They are to be unconcerned with doing anything socially responsible at the expense of the shareholder and with that executive bonuses.
We need a bifurcated economy where we-the-people control the industries vital to our existence. We still have control of the water under we-the-people. In other words, no profits on that which is essential. After all, a farmer nurtures food. An oil baron is picking up a fossil.
Before anyone starts shouting communism. IT IS NOT. It is democracy. What we have now is modified fascism.
The profit motive is not what creates new drugs, better oil extraction techniques, or better engineering or medical procedures. Public Universities are where most of the societal intellect comes from most of the time.
Many corporations are but parasites that gravitate to an idea only after it seems viable. That is why corporations buy up companies or University research and patents. And guess what, most of those who create those great products and services do not partake of the eventual profits. The parasites, the corporate class, keep most of it.