I forgot to explain my remarks on this. Another poster was claiming that the weak dollar was the cause of the price rise. There is no foreign exchange involved in the sale of domestic crude. Also, the philosophy of the board changed to a more market conscious strategy after the Lod Cook left. They reversed everything that Cook had done and basicly prepared ARCO for the takeover by BP, for which they were paid handsomely.
There is no foreign exchange involved in the sale of domestic crude. YOu are correct, of course. But this does not mean that foreign exchange does not affect the price.
Also, the philosophy of the board changed to a more market conscious strategy after the Lod Cook left. They reversed everything that Cook had done and basically prepared ARCO for the takeover by BP, for which they were paid handsomely.
Now you finally said it! In the increasingly socialist atmosphere of the present-day America, one freely offers a libel that the management is interested in being taken over because they allegedly receive a lot of money.
I cannot even count the angles, each of which shows how patently wrong this view is! Firstly, suppose that management is indeed benefiting from a takeover. So what? All of the shareholders do so too: the price offered for a company is almost always greater than the current stock price by a significant amount. To benefit shareholders is the jib the managers were hired to do and, if they do it well -- they get paid for it. What's wrong with that?
Secondly, the argument is a logical fallacy: you see and state the fact that managers benefited from the sale of the company and substituted with the fact that that was the ONLY thing that moved them. If I enjoy driving my car and thus benefited from buying it --- it must be that I purchased it to the detriment of my family. Silly, of course.
Demagogues around you use such argument all the time: it is a favorite of Pat Buchanan, for instance. He observers that some of our actions abroad, such as invasion of Iraq, benefit Israel (we weaken or destroy Israel's enemy) and claims that this is WHY we did it in the first place. What is the connection with that country? Clearly, Bush or Cheney cannot have any, so it must be Jews in the administration (who are expected, according to him, to sell out their own country for the sake of Israel): he uses "neocon" as a synonym for Jew.
Leave aside the (im)moral implications of Buchanan's argument and observe that it is logically incorrect: Buchanan starts with "Israel benefits from war in Iraq" but then substitutes it with "only Israel benefits from war in Iraq." This is a logical fallacy.
Friends of your husband do the same when they start with "management benefits from the sale of the company" and substitute it with "only management benefits from the sale of the company." It is the same argument, and it is equally incorrect and equally wrong: just as Buchanan defames Jewish members of Bush's administration by accusing them of betraying their country, the argument against management accuses them of betraying the shareholders. As I said, this is factually incorrect and immoral. And, incidentally, I do not find ignorance to be a sufficient excuse: if one does not know, one should not speak at all rather than speak falsely.
The reason for your not hearing opinions and facts such as those expressed in my post is a deep one: this knowledge has been removed from your textbooks and from the press. According to the press, everything American is bad, and what is more American than capitalism itself? What is more American than the corporations that FOUNDED this country? Indeed, how many people today, when thinking about the Hudson Bay Company or Virginia Company, connect them with the present-day corporations? How many people think of Harvard College (University) as the longest continuously functioning corporation in the U.S.? Hardly any, despite, the ironic fact that Hudson Bay is even still in existence.
Thirdly --- and finally, for I am going to stop here --- the claim that the company officers prepared it for "takeover by BP, for which they were paid handsomely" is also not quite correct. Surely, you have heard about the huge bonuses and severance they received. As I said earlier these two are different animals: a bonus, just like yours or mine, is a reward for the job well done in behalf of the shareholders. Severance pay, which is also like yours or mine and differs only in quantity -- the famous "parachutes" made infamous by the press and other socialist provocateurs --- are large as sums of money but they are not as great as the compensation the managers would've received if the company had NOT been taken over. In other words, if you compare the pay to your salary, it is a huge sum; but if you compare it to the pay the officer would've received if he stayed on his or her job --- that pay is not so great. It is often on the level of one year compensation. When IBM was downsizing in late 1980, it was paying that AND MORE to every person who was layed off.
It sad to see that conservatives do not even recognize when they repeat, however innocently, socialist mantra. That is why I think we shall see socialized medicine and then everything else within a generation. There is no one left who would be proud of capitalism to defend is --- or even know what it is. .