Slick Record

I ran across this paragraph in today's news roundup:

There's some good news on the economic front: the price of gas has dropped. Complicating that news for the White House, however: oil companies are expected to show record profits when they report their third-quarter earnings this week.

Two things strike me about this. First, there appears to be no coverage of the fact that gasoline prices have dropped primarily due to gasoline reserves being shipped from Europe....a temporary condition to help with Katrina disruptions. While oil has dropped in price and oil stocks have risen, refining capacity is still out in New Orleans and likely to stay out until the end of the year at a minimum. If gas prices stay down, it's only because the driving season is over. But watch out for those heating costs, diesel costs, and the cost of any other distilliates.

The second item is the profits on the horizon for the oil companies. Oil companies are literally drowning in cash, working diligently to try and find something to do with it. Note that the oil companies are not to any significant degree putting cash into development of alternative energies. It would seem that the intent is to milk peak oil right down to the last dollar.

I can't think of anything that is more representative of the Bush administration than the new record profits posted quarter after quarter by the oil companies. Concurrent with these obscene profit records is the lowering real minimum wage, record gas prices, record heating costs and a disappearing middle class.