BILLION...YES, THAT'S BILLION

The numbers are out, and EXXON-MOBIL made $40.6 Billion in profit for 2007!
That's 40,600,000,000, that's a lot of damn zeroes, isn't it. In fact, that's
downright obscene, while we're paying $3.00 and up for a gallon of gas. Why isn't
the government doing something about this? There used to be anti-trust laws that
read something like this:
1) Prohibiting agreements or practices that restrict free trading and competition between business entities. This includes in particular the repression of cartels.
2) Banning abusive behaviour by a firm dominating a market, or anti-competitive practices that tend to lead to such a dominant position. Practices controlled in this way may include predatory pricing, tying, price gouging, refusal to deal and many others.
3) Supervising the mergers and acquisitions of large corporations, including some joint ventures. Transactions that are considered to threaten the competitive process can be prohibited altogether, or approved subject to "remedies" such as an obligation to divest part of the merged business or to offer licences or access to facilities to enable other businesses to continue competing.
And, strangely enough, Standard Oil was broken up way back when and became Mobil & Esso;
of course Esso later became EXXON, and now they're EXXON-MOBIL and
making a record $40,600,000,000 which is the largest profit ever made by a
corporation. Who's on second - why EXXON-MOBIL who made $39,500,000,000 in 2006.
So, nexrt time someone talks about obscenity, mention that kind of money and
tell `em: No, this is what's really obscene:$40,600,000,000