Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Big Bad Oil?

Just recently, ConocoPhillips paid out $700 million in quarterly dividends. For the last year, they paid about $2.8 billion. Today, ExxonMobil announced they would pay out $2.1 billion in dividends, for one quarter. During the last year, they paid more than $8 billion in dividends.

Then there is Chevron, which has paid more than $5 billion in dividends. BP, a little more than $10 billion; Total, $6.9 billion, and Royal Dutch, $10 billion.

Even PetroChina Co, LTD, paid nearly $9 billion in dividends during the last year.

Where does this money go?

Mutual funds, pension plans, retirement accounts, millions of individual investors, and my mother-in-law (an ExxonMobil shareholder), to name a few. Dividends are taxed at a lower rate than income, which means that millions of Americans can keep more of their dividends. (Of course, Barack wants to raise these taxes).

And this is bad, how?

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