Huh? I thought you needed money to buy stock? Silly me, it's so simple when you put it that way, Scott, I'll just run out and invest a few $million in ExxonMobil. Oh wait, I see you're advising me to buy the entire company. Yeah, no problem, I'll just run down to my bank and ask for a loan for about $100 billion or so. Sure, piece o'cake. If only more Americans realized how easy it is to get filthy rich just by asking a bank for money!

What's this "put your money where your mouth is" stuff? I'm not touting EM stock. I just wanted to despin Tom's attempt to minimize ExxonMobil's profit by focusing on an inappropriate measure of their financial position. The industry uses ROCE, that's what we need to look at.

ROCE is an interesting measure, and--correct me if I'm wrong--I interpret it as something like ROI, except that the I is ExxonMobil's own capital rather than outside investment. If they don't pay a dividend and hang on to their capital, that means that ExxonMobil's wealth--and power--will double in about 2.5 years.

Overall, oil company profits, however you measure them, represent a gigantic transfer of wealth from ordinary Americans to a huge multinational corporation that's accountable to nobody except its majority shareholders. Gives ya a real warm-and-fuzzy feeling, don't it?