Can you believe this? Exxon Mobil sets record with $45.2 billion profit

I can believe it...gas prices not only reached record highs in 2008, they held steady at those record prices for a long time. The high gas prices are to blame for a lot of the economic problems we are having right now. The government could have done something to lower the gas prices when the prices were $4/gallon or HIGHER in some places, yet the Bush Administration elected NOT to take action on this issue. As a result, the prices of goods and services were increased, and at the same time, American consumers had LESS money to spend on these things because they were having to spend so much money to get to and from work each day. It is no surprise to me that our economy has ground to a halt. High gas prices are just ONE of the problems that created the crisis we are in right now. The big corporations and mortgage companies did this to themselves. I am no genius, but I could see this coming years ago, and I knew that something was going to have to be done to stop the downward spiral. Mortgage companies were handing out adjustable rate mortgages like candy, with the hopes that the homeowners would be able to get approved for a fixed-rated mortgage with a lending institution somewhere before the adjustable rate mortgages ballooned. People who should have never been approved for a mortgage of any type were being given these adjustable rate (balloon) mortgages. Gas prices were on the rise, yet wages were not. People were paying more and more to get by from day-to-day, yet they were not making more money. Now, all these adjustable rate mortgages are starting to balloon, yet the homeowners cannot get approved for a fixed-rate mortgage because their debt-to-income ratio is WAY too high, and their credit scores are too low due to credit card debt and missed payments. The adjustable rate mortgages have now ballooned into payments so high that the homeowners cannot pay the payments, resulting in what could be the highest rate of foreclosures this country has ever seen. People are deep in debt, and people are loosing their jobs daily. We are certainly headed into another depression if something is not done soon. I don't know if it will be as bad as the Great Depression of the early 1900's, but we are certainly headed in that direction. I am not being a "Chicken Little" here people...I am being realistic...