The Real Looters Are
Wearing Pinstripes
By Dave Lindorff
9-3-5
Forget the isolated looters. The real villains of the New Orleans
tragedy are the oil executives who have chosen this opportunity to
gouge us all and put the nation's economy at risk in order to rake in
the bucks while the getting's good.
In a crisis, there are always those who will obscenely take advantage
of the situation for personal gain.
I'm not talking here about the looters in New Orleans, as ugly and
mean as some of their actions have been.
I am talking about the oil industry.
The evidence is clear:
Ten percent of American oil production is off line because of
Hurricane Katrina. That has led to a nominal increase in the
per-barrel world price of oil, since 10 percent of U.S. production
represents only a single-digit portion of world demand. Yet gasoline
prices in the US have soared, from about $2..40 per gallon before the
hurricane hit to over $3.00 a gallon now nationwide?a jump of 25
percent.
Local gas station owners say that they have to raise their prices
immediately because they only keep a few days' supply on hand and need
to have the cash to pay for the next delivery, which will be priced at
the new higher wholesale rate. I am inclined to believe that, if their
new price is only around 20-25 percent higher than before.
But clearly, somewhere between the oil coming out of the ground or
into a port terminal, and those retail pumps, some businesses are
cleaning up at the expense of the public.
Read that: the oil companies are gouging and profiteering on disaster.
All you need to do is look at the stock pages. Haliburton, the oil
services company, is up from 28.69 to 62 over the year. Exxon/Mobil is
up from 45.09 to 64.37 over the year. Sunoco is up from 30.26 a year
ago to 73.22. The list goes on and on.
Back in World War II, there was an agency--led by a man named Harry
Truman--which aggressively prosecuted companies that tried to
profiteer on the war. Now profiteering on war, and on national tragedy
it seems, is simply seen in Washington as good business, to be
rewarded by investors.
Americans are now paying the price for handing all branches of the
government over to one party. Even with the Democratic Party little
more than an opposition in name only, if it had been in charge of even
one of the two houses of Congress, you can bet that the dynamics of
competitive politics would have led to hearings into price gouging and
disaster profiteering, but with Republicans in charge in both
chambers, the odds of that happening are zero. Likewise, with
free-market zealots being appointed by President Bush in droves to the
federal bench, don't expect any relief in the courts.
The impact of the oil companies' incredible greed will be profound.
It's not just that they are picking our pockets at a time of national
crisis; their short-term profiteering is likely to send the national
economy into a tailspin as higher oil prices stunt consumer spending
and push up all energy costs.
So far, the media coverage has focused on the actions of individual
looters in the destroyed city of New Orleans. To the extent that gas
prices have received attention, the focus has been at the retail end.
Nobody's talking about the middlemen, and especially about the giant
corporations that are really raking it in.
When you think about it though, you have to say that the cold,
calculating effort by some corporate executives to take advantage of a
national tragedy is far more vile and reprehensible than the actions
of desperate or even criminally opportunistic individuals in a city
that was essentially abandoned for days by federal authorities.
The inaction of the Bush Administration and of the Republican Congress
to challenge, or at least investigate, this outrage is equally
disgusting.
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For other stories by Lindorff, please go (at no charge) to This Can't
Be Happening! .
homepage: homepage: http://www.thiscantbehappening.net
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