Time To Put Facebook Out Of Business

It's looking more like Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg and the underwriters of the Facebook IPO swindled gullible investors, and not just the mom and pop kind who bought into the IPO hype the day the company started selling shares, but also "sophisticated" private market investors who bought before the company went public:

Those sophisticated pros include GSV Capital, a publicly traded investment company that bought a bunch of shares at a $70 billion valuation in June 2011, when the move was seen as such a coup that GSV’s own stock price went up as a result.

By January of this year, private market investors were buying shares at a valuation of about $100 billion.

Whoever bought at that price has now lost almost half of their money.

Worse, this stock seems capable of going lower. Henry Blodget, a former Wall Street analyst turned tech blogger, estimates that a fair price for Facebook stock is somewhere between $16 and $24 per share.

The Washington Post reports the scope of the investigations Facebook and its underwriters now face and why, even if its found that no laws were broken by the parties involved, the Facebook IPO has become the poster child of what's wrong with modern capitalism:

The Securities and Exchange Commission is examining how the company, its underwriters and the NASDAQ stock market executed Facebook’s IPO, according to Capitol Hill staffers and members of Congress who’ve been briefed by regulators.

SEC officials would neither confirm nor deny whether the agency is conducting an investigation. But there are three major questions swirling around the troubled IPO: what caused the technical glitches that disrupted Facebook’s NASDAQ debut; whether Facebook gave privileged information to certain analysts and investors; and whether Morgan Stanley, the IPO’s lead underwriter, gave conflicting messages to different kinds of investors before the offering.

For some in Congress, if federal regulators come up empty-handed, that could be an even greater cause for concern. “This IPO is a poster child for all that’s wrong with current practices,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in an interview. Whether or not the SEC or other regulators bring down the hammer, he believes that Facebook’s IPO is a clear sign that capital markets are rigged against ordinary “mom and pop” retail investors.

Now the best way to handle this, in my humble, naive opinion, is for people disgusted by the Facebook swindle to simply end their association with Facebook.

Stop using it.

Close your account.

Don't reopen it.

Send Zuckerberg and the other crooks at Facebook into a desperate scramble to save the company as it bleeds hundreds of thousands of accounts a month.

Remember, Facebook is already playing fast and loose with your information, selling it to the highest bidder, making money off of your data.

And remember, too, that if you have signed into your account even once since 2009, you have then signed a terms of service agreement that said Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook own all of your data and information forever, that you cannot take it back from them once you've posted anything.

This is a slimy, crooked company run by a slimy, crooked sociopath.

The way the IPO was handled, with some connected investors getting privileged information while others were lied to by the company, is not an aberration of company behavior - it is exactly how this company operates.

So make Zuckerberg and Facebook pay for their crimes and ethical breaches.

Stop using Facebook.

Close your account.

Don't reopen it.

If you can't quit the social network habit, then migrate to one of those alternative, open source social networks.

You know, the ones where you own your information and data and take it with you when you go.

Believe me, that kind of action will get the notice of Mr. Zuckerberg and his financial associates.

It will get the notice of Wall Street as well.

And maybe, just maybe, this kind of action can bring about the kind "reform" the world really needs - fewer slimy, crooked businesses run by slimy, crooked sociopaths.

After all, they're only in business of making billions because people use their systems.

But if you tune out, drop out and opt out, well, they won't be in the business of making billions anymore.

Not until they figure out the next scam, at any rate.

NOTE: I do not have a Facebook account.

I have never opened a Facebook account.

I will never open a Facebook account.