gas explosion we re seeing. well, the most important point is what it does to middle class and working poor in this country. at a time when we re hearing all sorts of proposals about os tear tee, it s a double whammy for the working poor. there s just not that much elasticity. if you have to drive to your job, what you have to start to give up is things like food or heating oil or other amenities of your daily life. that s really the issue here. it s going to affect people s politicalรง aspirations one wayr another. but at the end of the day this is a real crushing blow to the economy and to the pocketbooks and the wallets of the middle class and working poor in this country. sam, that s a perfect segue to our next topic, which is executive pay. there were no reports over the weekend that executive pay is soaring, you know, just a couple of years after the crisis and when, as you point out, there s still millions and millions of people who are really enduring hard times. median ex
rates keep on going down. you know on friday s show, we showed a piece from bloomberg business week that showed for the top 400 earners in the country their effective tax rate has gone down to 17%, which is a lot less than what we pay, which is unbelievable, right? and now that s main by and let me just also add to that, they re doing better and better. the top ceos pay went up this year by 12%. now the average ceo for the top 200 major companies makes $9.6 million. it s absurd to say they can t pay the tax. of course it s absurd. i think it s a matter of patriotism here as well. if you were taking home a bigger and bigger slice of the economy and paying less and less in tax rates and imposing the costs on everybody else, are you really being patriotic, fulfilling your responsibility to this country?
four of the world s top six oil importers. the world s number two is china right here with 4.3 million barrels imported a day, the third is japan with 4.3 million, germany is fourth, india 2.2 million, and south korea, 2.1 million. the united states, of course, is still the world s top importer coming in at 9.6 million barrels of oil a day. this oil comes from the middle east right now. and let me just pull up the pen. and basically, basically more than 75% of asia s crude oil comes from the middle east. and this comes from the persian gulf, goes across the indian ocean, through the strait, and up to north asia. and earlier we spoke with a commodities analyst at ubs. and he told us these industries would be most at risk to high-priced oil. throughout asia, you d have
completely grants students would get each year by eliminating grants for summer school. the administration says it would be able to keep the maximum completely grant at $5,550. the department of education stipulates that 9.6 million students will be seeking completely grants by next year. there s been an increase over the years. also on the chopping block, cuts amounting to $650 million to scale back a community service grant program and cut a community development program. now among other things, the programs pay for things like housing for the poor, infrastructure projects and economic development programs. jessica, these are just some of the estimated 200 programs that are either being scaled back or eliminated under this budget proposal. some incredibly deep cuts that will hit certain people very hard. thanks, mary. and an uproar over honoring a kkk leader. now a possible republican presidential contender is getting caught up in the
influence as well as some of its biggest businesses. today our focus is on china s oil industry. china is now the world s biggest consumer of the commodity. now this year, look at demand there. about 9.6 million barrels of oil every day will be consumed. about half of that is actually imported which gives you an idea of just how much they do rely on imports. this is what happened in 2009. 8 million barrels a day. let s take a close look now at some of the companies which dominate china s oil business. there are some big names here, too. it is going to start with cnpc, this is china s natural petroleum corporation formed in 1988. it is the biggest oil producer in china, also the fifth biggest in the world. it brought in more than $150 billion in revenues in 2009. moving along to sinopec, this is china petroleum and chemical corporation.