Facebook: Fraudbook

I am far from being knowledgeable about the intricacies of high finance. I understand the basics about finance: I know what stocks, bonds and securities are. I know basically how an IPO goes and about things like hedge funds work. I personally think finance is a necessarily evil. I think proximity to that much money is like too much power: corrupting.

But anyway, I was listening, reading and watching what seemed to me to be a lot of hype about Facebook's IPO with my eye rolling so many times that I thought I could make my own electricity by wrapping my eyeballs with wire.

In my cynical, very distrustful of Wall Street, conspiracy friendly tinted way, I figured the obscene initial valuation of FB in the $100 billion (with a B) was a clever scheme by Zucky and his insider boys to pump the stock price so all the guys with huge stock options could cash in and become insanely, filthy, obscenely rich overnight and then watch the stock price plummet. I told my wife, but she cares less about finance than I do. I told another friend who said something like "really?" with a touch of incredulity.

I admit think I see underhanded, big business scheme trying to do power-grabs, a la The Manchurian Candidate in my soup. I didn't really even take myself seriously.

Now, I start reading stories about how congress is going launch an investigation on how this whole FB IPO is becoming a huge scandal.

Basically the jist of it is that the people at FB who's job it was to pump up the initial asking price and generate interest in buying FB stock may have "overstated FB's growth potential". Then the big initial investors: JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, etc, got a call that essentially said "The people at Facebook are trying to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge".

What did they do? Did they call all their clients and say "run away, run far away!"?

Well, sort of. Only thing is they only told their big clients. The big clients who are already filth rich averted a disaster, but the rest of them who bought that bridge in NYC did not. They got screwed.

I know, I am shocked, too. The non-1% getting screwed: That never happens.

Unbelievable. It's like these people feel it's their birthright to fuck people out of their money. Their definition of "earning money" is "stealing money from people". I swear, there should be a sign somewhere on Wall Street that says "If you aren't fucking someone over, you aren't trying hard enough".

My eyes hurt because of all the rolling they have been doing. Where the heck is that wire?

Apathy

As promised, I will now blather about my latest obsession. But what is interesting, is that I almost think this obsession is waning. My desire to buy and build planes and helis is rapidly diminishing. I used to see a plane or heli in the advertisements and just desperately wanted it...NEEDED it. But then once I got it, put it together and flew it a few times, got completely bored with it. It's almost an empty feeling. Now I have another plane that I have bought electronics for, extra batteries, etc, that is just cluttering up my garage. I feel guilty and wasteful.

For the first few times, this coming down from each new-plane-high would wear off and I would be back at it again: lusting after another plane that ultimately would cause the cycle to repeat again. For a while it was RC jets. Then it was helis, now it's aerobatic planes. At least with the aerobatic planes, there is a lot of flying skills that you can learn.  They are far more capable than these compromised-for-the-sake-of-scale jets.

I can go bigger and probably better than the modest 3-d plane I have now, but the question that still haunts me, is why? What's the point? I'm even thinking of selling off my scale planes. They bore me. Not much to do with them other than fly around and go "cool, it looks good in the sky" and land it.

Helis are still not boring yet. They require so much more skill to fly and diligence to keep them flying.

Designing my own airplanes is another avenue that hasn't been completely exhausted. But, I still feel like this obsession's days are numbered. So, what I am going to obsess about next.

I could, and probably should, start riding again, but I just don't want to. I've been doing it for so long, with such dedication that I am completely burnt on it. I have ZERO desire to race.

A fellow ADHD friend is trying to get my back into motorcycles again, but thing is I don't really like riding on the street anymore. I still like the track, but that takes a lot of work and I just can't muster it up again.