Oil Companies

I hate news articles like this: (copied in part from the Conservative Grapevine)

Excerpt Of The Day: The Ridiculousness Of A Windfall Profits Tax On Oil
"Of course, the oil companies have made a lot of profit lately, but so have many other businesses and industries. Although Exxon got big headlines for earning $9.92 billion in the third quarter, few analysts bothered to note that this only came to 9.8 cents per dollar of sales — well below that of many other companies. For example, Citigroup and Microsoft each made 33.2 percent profit. " -- Bruce Bartlett

While I don't necessarily think that oil companies should not be making windfall profits it's the news article with the numbers that is all screwy.

"Exxon made 9.8cents per dollar of sales, but Citigroup and Microsoft made 33.2% profit."

Lets try getting some apples to apples.

The BBC has Exxon increasing their profit by 75% profit.
CNNMoney shows Citigroup's profit up by 35% .
And finally the NYTimes has Microsoft's profit increasting by 24%.

Therein lies the actual news and why people are SO upset with oil companies!