Neckcarjim's Blog

Matt Lauer, in all his journalistic brilliance, interviewed the CEO of ExxonMobil Rex Tillerson. Lauer displays not only his ignorance but the ignorance of Americans like "Elaine from Pennsylvania." Elaine sent an email into the show, which asked Mr. Tillerson. "'How can you justify the record profits you're making when people can't afford to put gas in their cars to go to work?'" First off, what does this question imply? It implies wealth envy. Elaine insinuates that oil companies have to justify their earnings in a free market society and that they are evil for making money when others are "suffering." So Tillerson's response is exactly what you would expect and what I have been saying day in and day out ... profits are not large because of high profit margins. but because of high volume. Clearly Elaine (and possible Matt Lauer) does not have a basic understanding of profit margins. But Tillerson really puts things into perspective. He says. "[W]hen you take our profit of $40 billion [in 2007]. that's 1 0 cents on every dollar of revenue that we generate... That puts us about in the middle of most Fortune 500 companies, so we're not at the top in terms of profit per revenue; we're not at the bottom." Do you hear that, folks? For all of you whining and complaining about oil companies, in terms of profit per revenue, these companies are about in the middle of most Fortune 500 companies.

Leave it to NBC to feature an email from some economic dolt who couldn't write a cohesive sentence on the difference between a profit and a profit margin.

Matt Lauer then had another brainless point. Apparently the oil companies are expected to be held to different standards than other Fortune 500 companies because "a lot of Fortune 500 companies. Mr. Tillerson, don't so directly impact people's ability to go to work, do their jobs, feed their families and that sort of thing, and that's where the problem comes in," So now the industry must not rely on supply and demand (like other companies would), but must also make businesses decisions based on how Billy is going to get to his job at MacDonald's.

What we're seeing in Lauer's comments is the new liberal dogma that it is only OK to make profits so long as you're making that profit on something that people don't really need.

One last thing. Lauer suggests that Exxon isn't investing enough of its profits in finding ways to bring down prices. Well Tillerson throws that right back in his face saying that they would do more if they could gain access to more areas to apply their technology. Are any of you environmentalists listening? When do you want to start becoming a part of the solution rather than the problem?