When a high-ranking U.S. senator sounds more like Karl Marx than Adam Smith over the issue of energy prices, it must be an election year.



Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, appeared on CNBC’s June 10 “Squawk Box” pushing government control of corporate profits. Dodd said he considered a company to be “doing very, very well” with profits above $8 or $10 per barrel of oil. He said he advocated a windfall profits tax, where Congress would determine what amount of profit is fair and what isn’t.



CNBC's Joe Kernan called the Connecticut senator on the idea, asking if he was going to apply the same strategy to other types of businesses. “Are you going to go across industries, across the board and decide what Congress thinks is a fair amount of profit and drawing lines on what’s fair and what’s not for corporations? That’s not the way it’s done in this country, senator. It could never be done that way, could it?”



“Yes, it could be,” Dodd said. “In fact it’s been done that way in the past and particularly when you’re trying to get some relief for people out here when the economy is in a tailspin. We’re about to go into a recession here. This is really causing a tremendous dislocation, not only here, but around the world.”



MP: If Senator Dodd is concerned about industries making "windfall profits," he might want to start by investigating the 57 industries with profit margins HIGHER than the oil industry (see list above, click to enlarge, profit margin data available here ).