peevish on gasoline

Oil industry profits, salaries fuel outrage
WASHINGTON - Thursday, Exxon Mobil announced it had earned $8 billion in profits in the first three months of this year. For outraged consumers, the staggering profit numbers boil down to this: Exxon earned 9.5 cents on every $1 of gasoline and oil sold, cashing in on skyrocketing prices at every stage of the process.
“The big money for Exxon Mobil,” says oil trader John Kilduff of Fimat USA, “is being made by taking crude oil out of the ground and refining it into gasoline and selling it on the street corner.”

I've listened to a sampling of American opinion on gasoline prices over the last few days. People are pissed. And they are quick to blame everybody, anybody, except themselves.

On Seattle talk radio, breathless doomers are wedged in with smug conservatives counting the months until Alaska gets plundered. The oil companies are colluding. The little guy gets screwed. Etc. etc.

So goes the chatter.

Maybe when gasoline hits five dollars a gallon, people will start to look around for structural fixes to their way of life.

Or the whining will just treble in volume. Hard to tell with corn fed, corn fueled, Americans.