Facebook’s stock prices have dropped a huge percentage from the initial offering price. Some believed prices would quickly rise and exceed $ 50 per share. Currently, prices sit at $ 31 per share — an 18 percent decrease from the initial offering price. Several news outlets are reporting that an SEC investigation could emerge surrounding Morgan Stanley’s handling of the May 17 IPO. Morgan Stanley cut revenue forecasts for Facebook in the days before the offering, “information that was not disclosed to the market before the stock was listed,” according to Reuters. I do not know much about how the stock market works, but apparently this is frowned upon, to say the least. If you would like to read more about the situation check out the links below. Newsweek/ The Daily Beast New York Times Reuters Bloomberg Businessweek
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Facebook’s stock prices have dropped a huge percentage from the initial offering price.

Some believed prices would quickly rise and exceed $ 50 per share. Currently, prices sit at $ 31 per share — an 18 percent decrease from the initial offering price. Several news outlets are reporting that an SEC investigation could emerge surrounding Morgan Stanley’s handling of the May 17 IPO.

Morgan Stanley cut revenue forecasts for Facebook in the days before the offering, “information that was not disclosed to the market before the stock was listed,” according to Reuters. I do not know much about how the stock market works, but apparently this is frowned upon, to say the least.

If you would like to read more about the situation check out the links below.

Newsweek/ The Daily Beast

New York Times

Reuters

Bloomberg Businessweek

#StopKony

Dear Everyone interested in Invisible Children or the Stop Kony movement, 

Of the $8.9 million in donations they earned in 2011:

$1.7 million spent in US employee salaries

$357,000 in Film costs

$850,000 in Production costs

$751,000 in Computer equipment

$244,000 in “professional services” (DC lobbyists)

$1.07 million in travel expenses

$400,000 in yearly office rent in downtown San Diego

$16,000 in Entertainment

etc…

Only 2.8 million (31%) made it to their charity program, which is further whittled down by local Ugandan bureaucracy.

I am curious to find out what the children actually get?

My source is page 6 and 12 of their own financial report

We Can Always Print Money to Do That

“The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default.” — Alan Greenspan, August 7, 2011

Is Mr Greenspan the greatest troll alive?  Following this quote, we can only hope that’s the case.

It’s certainly true that we could just print more and more and MORE money to pay offthe government’s $14 trillion+ debt.  Actually, we wouldn’t even need to physically print anything — we’d just add a few zeros to some balance sheets here and there and then set up a some wire transfers to our various lenders.  Voila!  Problem solved.  Remind me again why we had that whole debate last week?

The difficulty here — and presumably the reason why we haven’t taken advantage of this ostensibly simple solution already — is that this would cause massiveovernight inflation, probably collapse the dollar, and generally wreak havoc on the world’s economy.

See, whenever you just print huge quantities of money based on nothing, this results in devaluation, or inflation, of the unit of currency. The effect of the very policy Mr. Greenspan recommends may be clearly seen in the history of our money’s value over the course of the last 100 years of the Federal Reserve’s print-happy ways.  The dollar’s worth has declined to less than five cents of what it was at the beginning of the 20th Century.

Basically:  making more money out of thin air = less value per piece of money.

Read this post in it’s entirety on Bonnie Kristian’s website

Why Legalize Marijuana now?

Before you begin to read this, let me say that none of this writing is mine I read it here.  I do not condone the use of illegal drugs nor do I partake in the use of drugs, but I do think that Marijuana could be a huge economic boost to the economy if used in the right way — at this point I am not going to express my opinion on the medical and health benefits/consequences.

____________________________________________________

Suddenly the world is abuzz with talk about legalizing marijuana and other drugs. Political candidates, politicians, former presidents, interest groups, and even the Global Commission on Drug Policy are all calling for drug-policy reform. Given that we are in a worldwide economic and fiscal crisis, why is everyone interested in drug policy? Have we all suddenly regained our senses and realized that prohibition is irrational?

No, the more important reason for the interest in this issue is economic sense. Drug prohibition is a burden on taxpayers. It is a burden on government budgets. It is a burden on the criminal-justice system. It is a burden on the healthcare system. The economic crisis has intensified the pain from all these burdens. Legalization reduces or eliminates all of these burdens. It should be no surprise that alcohol prohibition was repealed at the deepest depths of the Great Depression.

Two Republican presidential candidates, former governor Gary Johnson and Congressman Ron Paul, support legalization. Ron Paul and Barney Frank have introduced legislation that would allow the states to legalize marijuana without federal interference. Former president Jimmy Carter recently published an editorial in the New York Times calling for an end of the global war on drugs, a position he has held since he was president.

Finish reading this post here from the Ludwig von Mises Institute.