It's just around the corner

Yessir – the economy is doing just fine if your last name is Exxon.  Good job Exxy – let’s give you a tax cut!  Of course if you work at Wal-Mart 67 hours a week and get paid for 40 with no benefits, whereas a few years ago you owned two stores – well sit down and shut up, Commie.  

Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's biggest oil company, said fourth-quarter profit rose 27 percent to a record $10.7 billion on surging energy prices, capping the most profitable year for any company in U.S. history.  Must have been those tax cuts for the rich boosting entrepreneurship, right?  Must be, because our friends on the right, the defenders of the people sure aren’t going to tax that windfall. That might screw up the gravy – I mean economy.  

Of course what we’ve been told for decades is that it will trickle down to someone’s great grandmother currently bagging groceries at the Winn-Dixie so that she can almost afford her medications.  I’m sure it will someday.  I mean, how could these oil men be wrong?

Of course we can feel good about the last third quarter’s 4.1% growth while ignoring or doublethinking the next quarter’s 1.1% - that’s the way we keep the economy strong – by talking it up and borrowing on our houses.  A 17.5 percent plunge in durable goods purchases, the biggest drop in almost two decades?  A 1.2% drop in consumer spending for 2005? What are you, some sort of socialist, Michael Moore loving, French Canadian Liberal?

Joe Carson, director of Global Economic Research at Alliance Bernstein, says: ``Low growth in GDP and a decline in productivity -- hours worked rose more than GDP -- implies margin compression and a sequential decline in operating profits.''  Of course these figures get revised more often than George Bush’s promises, but it’s hard to disagree that people are working longer for less, spending more to keep afloat and alive, while the rich get richer.

Something needs to be done – I mean the homeless may be increasing dramatically in my town, but that’s because they are lazy.  The real problem is that it’s getting harder and harder to find a place to keep my yacht!