Archive for July, 2012
A day in the financial life of Big Oil…
Posted by in News on July 25, 2012
Big Oil’s Big Profits, In 24 Hours
- The five biggest oil companies earned a combined profit of $375 million per day, or a record $137 billion profit for the year, in 2011, despite reducing their oil production.
- In 60 seconds, these five companies earned $261,000 — more than 96 percent of American households make in one year.
- These five oil companies received $6.6 million in federal tax breaks every day.
- In 2011, the three largest domestic public oil companies spent $100 million of their profits each day, or over 50 percent, buying back their own stock to enrich their board, senior managers, and largest share holders.
- The entire oil and gas industry spent on average $400,000 each day lobbying senators and representatives to weaken public health safeguards and keep big oil tax breaks, totaling nearly $150 million.
- Each CEO of the Big Five companies received an average of $60,110 in compensation per day last year. On average, their pay jumped 55 percent in 2011. Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson’s compensation came close to $100,000 per day last year.
Read On…
HSBC exposed: Drug money banking, terror dealings
The new report comes after the UK’s largest bank revealed it would have to pay a $1 billion fine to US authorities for money laundering offenses committed between 2004 and 2010.
BFD. What is a $1 billion fine to these people? 5% of the profit for such activities? It amounts to a simple ‘cost of doing business’.
This is one of the major things wrong with the American Justice system- If your crime is huge, you simply pay a fine. So F*cking What!
International banking giant HSBC may have financed terrorist groups and funneled Mexican drug money into the US economy through its lax policies, a damning Senate report reveals. The bank’s bosses have apologized for the misconduct.
David Bagley, HSBC’s Head of Group Compliance, admitted during a Senate subcommittee hearing that the company had made a number of lapses, adding that he planned to resign.
“I recognize that there have been some significant areas of failure,” Bagley told the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation. “I have said before and I will say again: despite the best efforts and intentions of many dedicated professionals, HSBC has fallen short of our own expectations and the expectations of our regulators.”
Irene Dorner, CEO and President of the bank’s American operation (HBUS), told the panel that HSBC deeply regrets the lapses in oversight, apologizing for the company’s mistakes.
Senator Carl Levin, the chairman of the subcommittee, gave details of one such intricate scheme to launder cash between 2006 and 2009.
“Because our tough AML (anti-money laundering) laws in the United States have made it hard for drug cartels to find a US bank willing to accept huge unexplained deposits of cash, they now smuggle US dollars across the border into Mexico and look for a Mexican bank, or ‘casa de cambio’ to take the cash.,” Levin noted. “Some of those casas de cambio had accounts at HB Mexico, which, in turn, took all the physical dollars that it got, transported them by armored car or aircraft back across the border to HBUS for deposit in its US Banknotes account, completing the laundering cycle.”
Read the whole article here.