Facebook IPO: Bono becomes a billionaire (1 Viewer)

Tell that to the people in the third world who can't afford proper food and housing, not to mention simple things like clean water and electricity.
Tell that to people who are dying from aids because they can't afford the medication that will save their lives, or the people who can't get a life saving operation because they can't afford health insurance, etc.etc.:wb:
 
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Well now Bono can afford to fix all those people. Him and Sir Bob Geldof. And Obama.

Oh, and Sean Penn. When he's done fixing Haiti.
 
I can already see the headlines, "Two Bukowski fans, Bono and Saint Sean, saved the world from all its problems by staging a concert televised world wide, together with Sir Bob and Obama".
 
Tell that to the people in the third world who can't afford proper food and housing, not to mention simple things like clean water and electricity.
Tell that to people who are dying from aids because they can't afford the medication that will save their lives, or the people who can't get a life saving operation because they can't afford health insurance, etc.etc.:wb:
I'll pay for your flight to the third world!
 
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Anyone who was not in a coma in 1999/2000 could have seen the Facebook IPO failure coming. It just goes to show you that people really are idiots after all, and greed trumps common sense every time, without fail.
 
Can't these investors figure out that a mountain of users doesn't necessarily directly translate into a mountain of cash ? Sure, "eyeballs" are prized by the advertisers but not every set of eyeballs bothers to click on those ads, either. I sure don't (most of the time). The subscription model still seems to be the only sure thing in online revenue. Advertiser-supported ventures have their limitations and wishing it were otherwise is just that: wishing.
 
seems to be at least one exception to all the rules:
I can remember, that at the time when GOOGLE went for their IPO, everybody was thinking "Boy, they're overrated already! This Has to crash!" - but it did everything but crash, right?
(plus: it's still advertiser-supported and free for users.)
 
Google has practically cornered the online advertising market with AdWords. They make boatloads of money, so there's really no comparison to Facebook as far as profitability is concerned.

What's funny about the Facebook IPO is people are angry that they didn't become incredibly wealthy overnight when they bought the stock. They are filing lawsuits and claiming fraud and deception because they weren't rewarded with 10 dollars for every 1 they "invested." They expected something for nothing and feel as if they've been screwed out of what they were entitled to. If you wrote it in a piece of fiction people would say it was unrealistic.

Our financial markets can't be any more broken. I only pray to Kumaré that Obama will fix them.
 
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They say the stock was too expensive to begin with, but on the other hand, nobody knows what a fair price would be.
Maybe Kumaré knows the answer.
 
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Google has practically cornered the online advertising market with AdWords. They make boatloads of money, so there's really no comparison to Facebook as far as profitability is concerned.

What's funny about the Facebook IPO is people are angry that they didn't become incredibly wealthy overnight when they bought the stock. They are filing lawsuits and claiming fraud and deception because they weren't rewarded with 10 dollars for every 1 they "invested." They expected something for nothing and feel as if they've been screwed out of what they were entitled to. If you wrote it in a piece of fiction people would say it was unrealistic.

Our financial markets can't be any more broken. I only pray to Kumaré that Obama will fix them.
Much like the (absolutely insane) housing market in the UK. People who bought at the wrong time are now pissed off that unsustainable growth didn't keep happening. The same people seem completely oblivious to the fact that their own greed was, in no small part, responsible for the housing crash. I realise there are other factors and it's not a nice situation for those people to be in but it's the way they also felt that they had a 'right' to make money by doing nothing that I find more than a little strange. Now we're told one of the main factors in the recovery will be whether or not the housing market starts to boom again. It seems we never learn.
 
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Exactly. Analysts and politicians are wringing their hands over here because "housing starts" - new home construction, and one of their "leading economic indicators" - is not increasing they way they'd like. They worry over this while millions of homes are being abandoned because people walk away when they don't feel like paying their mortgages anymore because the houses are worth less than they owe on them (or they can't pay for them because they can't find work).

And the things that got us out of the last depression in the U.S., like public works (which we need everywhere - our infrastructure is shit), will never happen because the government is riddled with politicians and not people.

Still, I wake up every day and smile because I'm not Spanish or Italian or Greek. But mostly because I'm not Spanish.
 
Co-operatives, as far as I can see it, seem to be the way forward. Where you have a business where every employee has a vested interest in the business doing well, and the decisions made are through an understanding of what is required. Shareholders are only concerned with their dividend which results in business's being put under pressure to cut costs, even when the business is turning a profit (we live in a world that allows corporations to make large redundancies when turning a profit, yet these same companies made full benefit of 'cheap loans' from government bailouts). Germany won't keep bailing out Europe, China won't keep bailing out the US, and Russia will finally admit that Stalin isn't dead but has in fact had his brain implanted into Putin.

Brazil 20 (or whatever it's called) will reveal that the worlds' governments don't really have a clue what they're doing, but so long as the banks and big business's are happy we can screw the planet and every little poor person on it. Maybe they know that's it and that's why everyone's policies are so half-arsed? We'll all drink Chinese made Champagne as the earth implodes and the richest little fuckers will float off to Mars in business class toilet cubicles.
 
Around late 2008-early 2009, a new assistant manager showed up at our workplace. During one slow day, we chatted about previous jobs and he told me he used to work for a mortgage company. He did quite well signing up people for ARM (adjustable rate mortgages) deals that all went kaput within a couple years. The reason he succeeded was all those ARM's were bundled and sold up the food chain as mortgage securities to large investment banks. And when those ARM's failed, the blood wasn't on his hands. He already got paid a fee. His division collected bonuses. He didn't give a fuck... his entire branch of fellow mortgage hustlers didn't either and the entire housing market almost collapsed entirely. Of course, he was unemployed for a bit until he wound up as Assistant Office Manager at our business. When asked about returning to that line of work, he said "Oh - there's probably not going to be another bubble for a few years. We'll see...."

Hope springs frighteningly eternal.
 

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