Lindsey Williams in The Energy non Crisis : " What kind of scandal would be greater than Watergate? Today it has appeared on the scene, and its ultimate objective is to get Americans to agree to—in fact, to request-socialization. Why have oil prices gone so high? I have never heard anyone reveal the true reasons before. I wondered if they would allow me to tell them ... but it's high time someone did, so I am going to! Remember Shylock and his pound of flesh? Well, this is close! Can you imagine what the interest would be on $12 billion?—even at the best prime rates? Let's even deduct the $2 billion the pipeline was supposed to cost once it got going. Let's just call it a nice round $10 billion in cost overruns. One company, in order to pay their proportionate share, had to borrow an amount equal to the entire net worth of the company ... to literally mortgage the whole company, as it were. Can you just imagine the interest on all that? Such staggering sums are mind boggling—and generally we tend to associate them with nothing smaller than the "National Debt."
Perhaps you have read statements by the oil companies telling us that their "declared" profits don't really give the true picture. Even such articles as those in Reader's Digest don't reveal the whole story. Oil companies are not allowed to include those exorbitant interest charges as deductions from profits, which for you and me would be the usual procedure. Remember the atrocious prime interest rates that we face today? Well, work it out! What would be the interest on $10 billion? Now, mentally deduct those staggering figures from the highly-publicized "declared" profits ... then you tell me who is really the villain! Certainly not the oil companies!"
