You're right about "quizzical" but little else.
The extraordinary record-breaking pattern of oil company profits in a time of economic and ecological uncertainty requires some reasoned justifications. But you haven't offered any. The oil companies, as buyers of crude, complain about wildly escalating prices. As refiners and producers, they complain about the costs of state and federal health, safety and environmental regulations. Yet as sellers, they enjoy colossal and dazzling profits without any complaints. And your "compelling" and persuasive analysis of this business and financial wizardry? Well, I'm afraid it's nowhere to be found.
As Wikipedia puts it,"Price gouging is a frequently pejorative reference to a seller's asking a price that is much higher than what is seen as 'fair' under the circumstances. In precise, legal usage, it is the name of a felony that applies in some of the United States only during civil emergencies. In less precise usage, it can refer either to prices obtained by practices inconsistent with a competitive free market, or to windfall profits. In colloquial usage, it means simply that the speaker thinks the price is too high. Non-pejorative uses are generally in reaction to what the writer believes is an unjustified restraint on the market."
In light of the facts reported last Friday, the increase in the wholesale price of refined gasoline in 2007 compared to the rate of inflation generally, the decline in the sales of new cars nationwide in 2007, and the endless litany of complaints raised by the oil companies whenever their prices and practices are challenged, it is not at all unreasonable to question whether these record profits perhaps came at the expense of the innocent consumer. To the contrary, these facts shift the burden of explanation to the beneficiaries of these riches, the oil companies, and to their apologists, who rarely offer anything other than tired citations to the brute kinds of laissez-faire economics that were rejected in this country over a century ago. That's why I referred above to AmeriQuest and Enron and Countrywide and HealthSouth and Archer Daniels Midland, whose similar defenses in similar circumstances proved to be weak and wanting and ultimately ineffective.
As the LA Times wrote yesterday, "Exxon Mobil Corp. shattered its own record as the world's most profitable publicly traded corporation, as rising oil prices helped the company bring in better-than-ever income and revenue for the fourth quarter and 2007." Perhaps Professor Pangloss sees nothing but good news in those facts, but the rest of us who have had to make involuntary contributions to these "world's most profitable" results have some reasonable questions about how that happened twice in a row in today's volatile business climate.
I doubt you are so credulous that you just accept everything you're told. I believe there is enough preliminary evidence here to warrant public inquiries into the sources of these record profits and that the possibility of price gouging cannot and will not be summarily dismissed, which may be why the shares of Exxon and Chevron actually fell after their financial results were announced on Friday. You have already categorically rejected "a conclusion of price gouging" in your post above, so now the burden of persuasion has shifted to you. Profit is one thing, but two straight years of "world record" profit is quite another. And this time, professor, please provide verifiable answers in place of Socratic questions. Thanks.