Oil prices artificially high

http://www.canada.com/saskatoon/starphoenix/news/story.html?id=df8ce4bb-2dae-4d90-b016-6fb6af353309

CALGARY -- Oil prices continued to rise Friday, touching $40 US a barrel for the first time in nearly 14 years, as fears over terrorism and a summer gasoline shortage in the U.S. continued to prompt speculators to push prices higher.

The benchmark price of oil rose 56 cents to $39.93 on the New York Mercantile Exchange and touched $40 US for the first time since October 1990, when Iraqi troops were occupying Kuwait.

Oil prices have climbed 52 per cent over the past 12 months and 23 per cent since the year began -- defying observers who see no fundamental reason for oil prices to have stayed so high for so long.

"The laws of economic gravity are eventually going to re-assert themselves," said Judith Dwarkin, chief economist at Ross Smith Energy Group, a Calgary think-tank. "But the longer the market stays lodged at these lofty heights in defiance of fundamentals the harder it gets to call when a correction will occur."

more...


Oil price up, but supply also rising

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/energy/2557274

NEW YORK — The rise in oil prices to nearly $40 a barrel in the United States on Friday overshadows a fact that should pressure crude values lower: the United States has a lot more oil than it did this time last year.

Strong oil imports, especially from Mexico and Nigeria, have pushed U.S. commercial crude oil supplies up from last year's levels by 9.1 million barrels, or more than 3 percent, according to the Energy Information Administration, the statistics arm of the Department of Energy.

Even with last year's thinner supplies, oil prices then were around $27 a barrel — $13 or 33 percent below Friday's.

That is because a large percentage of oil's current red-hot price represents a "security premium" about fears that violence in the Middle East might cause a supply disruption. Barring a major supply disruption, the stocks eventually will push oil prices lower, analysts said.

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Can you give an attribution? Friedman's words as I recall (and have taught) them wre "the social responsibility of business is to increase the profits."

Same meaning, or rather, a more sweeping one -- but if he also said what you quote I would love to have the source.

Page 6, boxed off on it's own so I assumed it was a proper, direct quote. Maybe I've been propagating a misquote?

You could try contacting Hightower, he's usually pretty good at replying.

http://www.newint.org/issue347/keynote.htm
Meanwhile, most current debate centres around whether corporations can be ethical.‘Yes,’ says a new generation of management gurus – and NGOs for that matter – coming onstream. They’re updating the message of the man who dreamed up corporate globalization, Milton Friedman, who wrote in 1970: ‘The corporation cannot be ethical, its only responsibility is to make a profit’. Many sincere people are furthering the debate about the environment within companies, while most of us have either at some point worked for, or know someone who works for a transnational. Very few are the kind of cigar-wielding corporate criminals of popular imagination, plotting to take over the world.


http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:pukiZdQHeFQJ:www.cs.indiana.edu/~gasser/PFC/Globalization/golden-rules.doc+%22The+corporation+cannot+be+ethical%22&hl=en


Some other great ones here
http://www.righteouswarriortemple.org/New%20Folder/q8.htm

"The corporation cannot be ethical. Its only responsibility is to turn a profit."

— economist Milton Friedman



"Corporations have neither bodies to kick nor souls to damn."

— Andrew Jackson



"When punished, the corporation never repents. Nor is it jailed, for, as we have observed, these corporations do not exist in any physical sense so they cannot, in fact, be punished. As concerns justice, those invisible entities are, for reasons not at all clear, in most ways above the law and remain immune to the operation of justice."

— Gerry Spense



"The idea that the poor are poor because they are lazy, and that the rich are rich because they are not, is part of the dogma of free enterprise and leaves half the world famished and in rags."

— Gerry Spense


Lot's of links come up in google, but nothing giving the original context of the quote. :shrug:

They are all equally unattributed, second-hand quotes.

I tried Amazon.com for a Friedman book published in 1970, and there were two, but neither was among his political books.

Honestly, I think this is a misquote -- and since the original is more sweeping and pointed, why not use it instead?

On edit: The content of the misquote suggests the source of the distortion -- opposition to corporations. Now, Friedman would downplay the difference between corporations and other businesses -- the authentic quote refers to the social responsibility of business. Here is the point: anticorporate folks often romanticize small business. But, on the whole, small business is probably worse than corporations are for exploitation of labor, political backwardness, and, (in proportion to output) despoiling the environment. So perhaps Miltie is right to minimize the difference.

Friday (?) morning there was a news story saying the crude prices now match the high they reached during the gulf war. IIRC, the highest gas prices climbed at the pump at that time, was about $1.62 per gallon for premium, and that was in upstate NY, where it's usually a little higher than most places, anyway.

The Sunoco down the road now has premium at $2.09.

in Eugene Oregon - the most I have ever paid here.

though there may be a few stations that I could not find that are down around $2.29, which was as high as it got during the invasion itself.

Same old game, different name?

October surprise.

Oil companies log record profits through the summer. In the fall, they dramatically cut prices. Joe Sixpack and the wife are happy that it only costs forty bucks instead of sixty bucks to gas up the Suburban. Score votes for the Bushies. A motion is made by Tom DeLay in the House to make Iraq the 51st state, to make homosexuality illegal, and to outlaw all abortion.

Who says crime doesn't pay? Especially when the entire energy industry is run by the government - ours and the Saudis.

know what I mean?

...it's being stockpiled for the next big military push in the Middle East. Supplies always go up when wars are being planned.

Bingo, thousands of jobs appeared.
How many are flipping hamburgers at Mickey Dee's?

I have a silly test for the Jobs identification.
Go any where...dr's,restaurant, schools, train stations,market, anywhere.
Then see if everyone looks busy.
Everyone that I see,whereever I go looks B U S Y and over worked.
Now if all these thousands of jobs appeared out of thin air,why does the work load appear higher than ever?

... friends of * are making a tidy profit-- anybody surprised?

NEW YORK (Reuters) - ChevronTexaco Corp., the nation's second-largest oil company, said Friday that quarterly profit rose 33 percent on higher energy prices and refining margins, even as oil and gas production dropped.

The San Ramon, Calif., company reported first-quarter net income of $2.56 billion, or $2.40 a share, up from $1.92 billion, or $1.81 a share, a year earlier. The stock jumped 1.5 percent in early trading.

http://money.cnn.com/2004/04/30/news/fortune500/chevrontexaco.reut/


Thirty-three friggin' percent....

(btw, my bold- just found it interesting. Forget Saudi, THIS is where we'll get our October surprise, folks)

ON EDIT: farked up my html

They are having excellent profits....

Meanwhile in Seattle
Costco gas: $2.03
The Majors: $2.20



:puke: