The people are angry. Well, what’s new? The people are always angry. About what and at whom, and is it likely that your house will get burned down by rioters — those are the operative questions. I suppose we could add: Is the anger warranted?

In a time of extreme financial turbulence and pessimism, American businesses need incentives to launch, develop, produce, and hire. Regulations add layers of time, effort, and costs to any business, but especially to those struggling to launch. Many entrepreneurs will give up when they see what faces them; others will be forced out of business due to non-compliance; still more will go bankrupt or be forced to drastically compromise their working conditions due to compliance costs and changes.

ExxonMobil’s announcement of quarterly earnings totaling $10.7B — and annual earnings of $36.1B — has this week provoked a predictable resurgence of the anti-”Big Oil” rhetoric that last spiked in early November of last year.

On November 10, executives from the major oil companies in the United States were questioned by US senators regarding the nature of their unusually high profits for the third quarter. Discussion hasn’t much dwindled on the topic since then, and I’ve consequently seen, read, and heard a good many people of all walks of life echoing the complaints of Congress that the profits in question are unfair, unpatriotic, and greedy — in short, that the consumer is being gouged by the oil companies.

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