http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060130/treasury ... .html?.v=2
AP
Treasury Boosts Borrowing Needs to $188B
Monday 2006-01-30 15:38 ET
By Martin Crutsinger, AP Economics Writer
U.S. Treasury Boosts Borrowing Needs to Record $188 Billion in Latest Quarter
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government expects to borrow a record $188 billion in the January-March quarter, even more than it anticipated three months ago, the Treasury Department announced Monday.
The total will surpass the old mark of $146 billion set in the first quarter of 2004, a year in which the federal budget deficit hit an all-time high in dollar terms of $413 billion.
After declining last year to $319 billion, this year's deficit is expected to reach $400 billion, according to the Bush administration, which has said part of that increase will reflect higher spending to rebuild New Orleans and other hurricane-damaged areas of the Gulf Coast.
The Treasury Department's new estimate of the amount it will need to borrow in the current quarter surpasses the $171 billion estimate made in November.
Officials attributed the higher figure to a timing issue when Medicare payments are made to health maintenance organizations. Those payments were made in January instead of December as Treasury had expected and therefore will drive up borrowing needs for this quarter.
Treasury officials said they still expect to hit the current debt ceiling of $8.184 trillion in mid-February but will be able to use various bookkeeping maneuvers to keep from disrupting borrowing operations until mid-March.
Democrats are hoping to use the congressional debate over the need to raise the borrowing ceiling to highlight the failure of Bush administration budget policies. They contend Bush's support for sweeping tax cuts during his first term is the major reason the deficits have been soaring.
The administration contends the tax cuts helped to get the country out of the 2001 recession and must be made permanent so economic growth will not be slowed in the future.
The announcement Monday was part of the government's quarterly refunding operations. It will announce on Wednesday the amounts of money it will raise next week and the types of Treasury securities it will sell to raise that cash.
One of those securities will be a 30-year Treasury bond. The government announced last August that it was bringing back the 30-year bond with the first auction of the new bonds taking place Feb. 9.
Treasury debt:
http://www.treas.gov/offices/domestic-f ... -refunding
http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/060130/miller_e ... .html?.v=2
Reuters
Record profits spark new backlash against Big Oil
Monday 2006-01-30, 17:44 ET
By Deepa Babington and Ben Berkowitz
NEW YORK (Reuters) - It's hard to celebrate a profit of nearly $11 billion when almost no one wants you to enjoy it.
Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE:XOM - News) on Monday fulfilled the corporate fantasy of reporting the most profitable year in U.S. history, only to be met with fierce public outrage at the achievement.
Still fuming over higher gasoline prices and rising heating oil bills, politicians and consumer groups set off a fresh wave of calls for special taxes against Big Oil after Exxon posted record profits of $10.7 billion in the latest quarter and more than $36 billion for the year.
"Once again, Exxon Mobil has reaped the largest windfall in U.S. history at the expense of hard-working families," Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle said in a statement. "I hope that this news will finally convince the U.S. Congress to take action and force the oil companies to give consumers a refund."
Exxon, in its earnings statement, said it understood the growing public interest in energy prices, but that its strong results would spur investments to meet energy demand over the long-term.
"Its unfortunate that we are dealing with this criticism of our industry," said Exxon spokesman Mark Boudreaux. "We are doing our part to invest in new oil and gas projects to provide supplies to our customers."
All totaled, Exxon and its top U.S. peers Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips reported net profits of $18.58 billion in the fourth quarter and $63.87 billion for all of 2005.
Taken in context, that combined annual profit eclipses the market capitalization of one-third of the blue chip companies in the benchmark Dow Jones industrial average. (^DJI - News) It also is a larger figure than the entire economies of 131 out of the 184 countries ranked by the World Bank in 2004.
New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Edward Markey, a senior Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, were others who quickly piled criticism on Big Oil.
"The Bush policy of subsidizing wealthy oil companies has proven to be wildly effective in boosting oil company profits, but it continues to harm American consumers and threaten economic growth," Markey said in a statement.
ExxposeExxon, a coalition of 15 environmental and other groups that banded together a few months back, used the record results to launch a fresh attack on Exxon and its policies.
"A company like Exxon Mobil that is making record profits, and is making those profits off the back of American consumers, has a responsibility to invest those profits into responsible energy policies," said Shawnee Hoover, a campaign director for the coalition. "And that is precisely what Exxon is fighting."
MEDIA BLITZ
Though the calls are more of a public relations nightmare for Big Oil at the moment, the energy industry fears it could quickly turn into something more punitive from Congress.
The last time Big Oil reported quarterly earnings the heads of top oil companies were hauled up before the Senate to defend their profits and explain why a windfall tax should not be levied on them.
This time, the industry has tried to fight back even before some of its largest names reported profits.
The industry launched a media blitz last week, trying to convince reporters and the public that a $10 billion profit is not just a $10 billion profit but rather a comparably reasonable rate of return for each dollar of sales.
The American Petroleum Institute took a full-page ad in the New York Times on January 26 with a chart showing how many cents of profit various industries made over the last five years for each dollar of sales.
Oil and natural gas came in at 5.8 cents per dollar, according to the API, versus 10.8 cents for real estate, 16.2 cents for pharmaceutical companies and 17.3 cents for banks.
"What many may find surprising is that, on average over the past five years, the profitability of America's oil and natural gas industry is far less than many other major industries, like banks, pharmaceuticals and real estate," the advertisement said.
Those record profits will come in handy for financing the increased US debt and borrowing needs.
