I'm not engaging in a "common trick" nor am I "playing with statistics" to point out the industry itself does not consider simple profit (the kind you think you understand when you say "profit") an appropriate measure of financial performance, and considers ROCE to be the proper measure to use. If you think it's a trick or playing games, you should take it up with ExxonMobil and their financial people.

Then there's that gratuitous crack about unemployment statistics. It should be obvious even to a Republican that the number of people employed is the only accurate and unspinnable measure of the employment situation. How else would you measure employment than by measuring employment? You know full well that the government's "unemployment rate" is deceptive because it measures only people actively searching for work--that is, receiving unemployment insurance payments and reporting in to the state employment office--and excludes those who have given up and are being supported by family, private charity, or government assitance. Nor do employment figures of any kind reveal the quality of the jobs, and whether people are maintaining their incomes or being downsized into lower-paying jobs.

That's a pretty messed up set of statistics, as I'm sure you discovered trying to squeeze the numbers out of it. It's hard to tell for sure, but I think that they're out of context. The article they support is about the "problem" of excess cash reserves and I think that the righthand columns of the table represent a hypothetical scenario: "Impact of Paying down Capital Employed with Excess Cash". The article talks about exceptional strategies like acquisitions and stock buybacks, and while I guess that's "capital employed", I seriously doubt that they're using ROCE in the sense of operating investments that the oil industry uses ROCE.

I don't know if those statistics support either side of this argument. Pending two cents from a financial guy like Scott to explain it, the question's still open.

But hey, nice job using a big steaming pile o'statistics to further obfuscate the issue.

Oh, BTW...

(a term I wonder if you had ever heard of until you found it on a web site bitching about the oil companies)

No, dumbass*, as a matter of fact I first came across the term ROCE about three months ago, the last time ExxonMobil profits were big news, in an article in our beloved but soon to be swallowed by media consolidation San Jose Mercury-News. I'm sure you saw the article, but of course it didn't stick, not inducing clinical dehydration in Republicans and all.

*--well, damn, sorry, but you're trying so hard to be nasty that you're coming up with some pretty dumb statements. Calm down and try to think, wouldja?