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?