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I recently came across this list on Forbes on the largest 25 tax payers. Forbes does a bit of analysis on each of them. It is probably worth your time to jump over, but I thought I would give the highlights here:

 

Rank of tax expense

Company

Symbol

Effective Tax Rate
1 ExxonMobil XOM 39%
2 Chevron Corporation CVX 43%
3 Apple Inc. AAPL 25%
4 Wells Fargo & Co. WFC 31.2%
5 JP Morgan Chase & Co. JPM 26%
6 Wal-Mart Stores WMT 31%
7 ConocoPhillips COP 51.5%
8 Berkshire Hathaway Inc. BRK 28%
9 IBM IBM 24%
10 Microsoft Corporation MSFT 22.8%
11 Philip Morris International Inc. PM 29.5%
12 Goldman Sachs GS 33%
14 Comcast Corporation CMCS 32%
14 The Procter & Gamble Co. PG 23.5%
15 Johnson & Johnson JNJ 23.7%
16 Intel Corporation INTC 23.6%
17 Occidental Petroleum Corp. OXY 42%
18 UnitedHealth Group UHG 35.9%
19 The Walt Disney Company DIS 32.7%
20 AT&T T 27.8%
21 Oracle ORCL 21.4%
22 The Coca-Cola Company KO 23.1%
23 The Home Depot Inc. HD 37.2%
24 McDonald’s MCD 32.4%
25 Google GOOG 19.4%

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I had discussed this in my earlier posting but Comcast really needs to fix some things at NBC. Anybody associated with this mistake needs to go flip burgers for a living.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Comedian Jay Leno will return to his 11:35 p.m. timeslot on NBC and end his nightly 10 p.m. comedy-talk series, NBC Universal chairman of television entertainment Jeff Gaspin told reporters on Sunday. “[‘The Jay Leno Show’] did not meet our affiliates’ needs and we realized we needed to make a change,” Mr. Gaspin told reporters gathered at a Television Critics Association conference in Pasadena, Calif.

Mr. Gaspin said the network hopes to move Conan O’Brien’s “Tonight Show” to 12:05 a.m. and Jimmy Fallon’s “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” to 1:05 a.m. But those arrangements have not been confirmed and talks with the hosts and their management teams are ongoing, Mr. Gaspin said.

http://online.wsj.com?mod=djemalertNEWS

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I am not a bit surprised that Leno is in trouble at NBC. Moving that format to 10P in the 21st century was foolish. It may have been okay in the 50s or 60s but that show was doomed the day that Jay Leno walked on to the stage.

Of course, it doesn’t help that Conan is a flop in the 11:30 time slot.

The executives that put this together should be fired. It should be the first thing that Comcast does now that they have control of the company from GE. Fire the buffoons that did this. Talk about destroying a valuable commodity! Warren Buffet says that you should only invest in companies that can be profitable even if idiots run them. I don’t know if I agree with that advice but I definitely don’t think you should invest in companies that are run by buffoons!

This must be why GE does so badly in my Confident Investor Rating – they simply do not know how to drive the value of their products.  Hopefully, Comcast will do better.