Exxon, Shell and Fortune 500

On my return from holiday I bought Fortune magazine to read on the 4 hour train ride from south of France to Paris. It's first time I buy the mag and I actually enjoyed it. It changes from the usual bad-news/gossip mags that are out there.

But when going through the global list of fortune 500 companies I was slightly taken aback.

The number one company for profits in 2008 was Exxon Mobil? Hold on a second, I must have read wrong. We had an oil crisis in 2008, the price of crude oil skyrocketed. Low-cost airlines went broke across the world due to skyrocketing gas prices. People were left without jobs, travelers were left around the world needing to pay new flight tickets. And I could go on about the problems the oil crisis.

Yet what am I reading... that Exxon Mobil had the highest ever profits in their history AND not only that, it seems they beat the records for profits of any American company.

Wow, that's slightly disturbing. It's just against any concept of exchange, value for money or service that I know of. If the price of crude goes up, it is understandable that the price to the consumer would raise. But the price of crude went up to about $151 in 2008. It then went back down to $67 today.

That change hasn't been turned over to the consumers.

Now I went through the list of global 500 companies and find the oil companies all over it. It's OK that they make a lot of money and we all heard the story of the Black Gold. The next surprise... Shell is the biggest company in the world!

In fact Fortune's editor puts a little comment "America's Exxon Mobil remains the most profitable company, with income last year of $45.2 billion. In fact, last year's high oil prices allowed global energy companies to dominate this year's list, capturing 7 of the top 10 slots." 

It's a little sad to see that while the world is struggling to find solutions for the incredible pollution problem, for the low economy and incredible job losses.

And in the back of that the oil companies (which make or break many industries since they all rely on oil) are racking in the profits on their backs!

As a Scientologist there is one fundamental datum that is taught again and again. It's the concept of exchange, to always give slightly better service or product than one has received exchange for. I have always lived with that concept and apply it on my work all the time. The results speak for themselves. The companies I work with are all turning around their sales in an otherwise difficult year.

It seems oil companies could learn from these concepts.

Elections... please vote!

American elections are always something to behold. The fanfare and hullabaloo that goes on is amazing. The money spent at campaigns is quite amazing too (Actually I hope someday that gets some form of control as it is totally unreal and really doesn't need to be - they would have a president without all that).

I just watched a French documentary movie called "Being W" which was released about one month before "W" by Oliver Stone, it is quite hilarious actually.

You can see the trailer here:

While we can definitely discuss the possibility of a conspiracy to get W on as president - I am sure enough people are doing that already. It is true that due to lack of votes the polls were tight enough to be able to proclaim him president.

I loved the video below featuring an amazing gamut of stars.
(Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Snoop Dogg, Harrison Ford, Julia Roberts, Ben Stiller, Will Smith, Steven Spielberg, Justin Timberlake, along with Sacha Baron Cohen as “Borat,” Zach Braff, Colin Farrell, Neil Patrick Harris, Scarlett Johansson, Shia LeBeouf, Tobey Maguire, Ryan Reynolds, and Jason Segal)

Check it out.

Borat's comments sporadically inserted take the video from being funny to hilarious. And the message really comes across well.

I would vote after seeing this.

However what scares me most about this election is the choice of candidates. The two main candidates (Obama and McCain) just fail to convince me on their abilities to lead the most powerful nation in the world. It is like a status race for personal benefit rather than getting the country back on track.

I saw the video of an unlikely winner (Ron Paul) which seems to convince a lot more.

But unfortunately - as usual I just doubt that the ones that really care and who actually mean to make some real positive improvements, just don't get voted in.

Well all I can say to all Americans is VOTE! Your vote makes a huge difference on the world scene!

The financial recession ... en passant

 

Ok so we're being repeatedly reminded by the press that we are in a financial recession. There is probably a bunch of truth in that but I don't understand why the press is so keen to keep spreading the news of the "catastrophe" that is about to happen.

At the end of the day this is their money too!

Which news editor doesn't know that the more one can bring panic to the people the more they will try to take their money out of the banks and the more they do that the worse off the whole situation will go? It is one of the first things we all learned about banks.

Yet they are all too happy to repeat it in the news EVERY DAY and SEVERAL TIMES a day! At the end of the day it is their own savings they are messing up.

If I were an editor I would be slightly worried about my own money - and maybe I would try to find some good news about the financial situation so I could cool the whole thing down a bit.

Sometimes I wonder what really goes on in the mind of a news editor...

Now back to banking. I recently read a simple and excellent text that L. Ron Hubbard wrote about banking to the financial departments of Scientology Churches. It is from September 1982 it's called "AND THAT IS BANKING".

It explains in simple terms what banking is, what inflation is, what the role of a banker is etc. I advise it to anyone who can read.

It is volume 3 of the Management Series by L. Ron Hubbard. In the section called Finance Series. And exists in about 11 languages or more.

Just an environmentally friendly idea

I had a crazy idea the other day. Maybe it could work - of course it would require someone to lobby the big petrol companies and governments and so forth and while I know by blog is good ;-) I don't know if it is that good yet.

In order to reduce the traffic in the cities we could increase the public transport use. That is a known fact and many big cities are promoting that. However taking a bus, the metro, a subway or train in most countries costs a fortune. And the prices are going up every year. It is like they are trying to get rid of customer!

Now what if the big oil companies did a super PR stunt. They would sell the gas for all buses in the cities at cost. i.e. no profit for them. Even maybe donate some of it (it isn't like they are low on cash - what with all the Iraq resources being opened to them in the last few years). They get a label on the buses saying they have sponsored that and it's great PR for them.

Then we get all the taxes on these buses and metros cancelled, just slash it down to nil. Basically nobody makes profit on the money - but everybody makes profit on the environment sustaining itself a little longer.

The oil companies get good PR on it. The Politicians get good PR on it. The people get less cars and less polution.

We all get to live a few years more on our lovely home.

Well it was a thought, if you have a comment POST it.


PS: It's great to be back.