Happy Holidays From Big Oil

Tis the season to be jolly....for oil executives and their buddies on Wall Street that is. Wall Street workers are cashing in this year with a record $38 billion dollars in bonuses. Meanwhile the price of oil went over $99 a barrel briefly today. Thanks to some pump in the midwest, it fell back down under $98. It is only a matter of time until it reaches that vaunted triple digit number and that spells bad news for anyone that doesn't work in finance or runs an oil company.

From The Huffington Post:

Light, sweet crude for January delivery fell 90 cents to $97.13 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Before the inventory report, prices had risen as high as $99.29 a barrel in electronic trading to break the previous intraday record of $98.62 set earlier this month.

"Not exciting enough to get us over the hump just yet," said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Alaron Trading Corp. in Chicago, referring to the inventory data.

"Exciting" is a word used by analysts and traders, not ordinary Americans. Heating oil and gas prices have been steadily climbing and there is no end in sight for where they might go. The details in the news may be mundane, but they translate into sorrow for people that have to drive or want to heat their homes this winter. Meanwhile profits for the oil companies continue to soar, and they're the ones laughing all the way to the bank while the rest of us suffer.