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Goldman Sachs Says No Facebook Shares For US Investors
theodp writes "In 2009, Robert Cringely speculated that the day might be coming when Goldman Sachs decides the United States isn't worth dealing with anymore. Crazy, eh? Maybe not. Blaming 'intense media attention,' Goldman Sachs has decided to exclude US investors from a $1.5 billion Facebook offering. In a nicely-timed all-investors-are-not-created-equal MLK Day statement, the US taxpayer bailout beneficiary said, 'Goldman Sachs decided to proceed only with the offer to investors outside the US....We regret the consequences of this decision, but Goldman Sachs believes this is the most prudent path to take.'"
ARE WORTHLESS!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
only reasonable explanation. Looks like they may be screwed any way though.
It seems to me from stories of colleagues and family (all outside the US), that dealing with entities in the US can be a great PITA as they tend to try to screw you in all kinds of unwanted positions. Could this have something to do with it?
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
http://i.imgur.com/Q7S47.jpg
Nuff' said.
We should remember this next time these assholes want a bailout.
Should have let them fail. Then they wouldn't be lending to any investors. If you want our money be ready to play by our rules.
The SEC has all sorts of regulations meant to "protect" the public. Goldman-Sachs is just trying to obey them.
You know, the one for the money I loaned them via my taxes agains my will.
Be gone from my sight or prepare to feel my flaming wraith!
The next time they get in trouble.
We bail you out of from your greedy stupidity and this is your thank you? Looks like someone needs their corporate charter revoked.
This is because of the publication of the offer. They won't fall into the exceptions for the private placement and thus doesn't want to mess with an SEC investigation or sanctions. I wouldn't blame Goldman, blame the media.
G-S are running the government. How long before someone puts out a list of their executives names and addresses with a "surveyor's mark"?
...to alleviate post-offer depression in the price, but there's a sizeable market of US investors who want to get in, and that'll keep the prices up for a while. Of course, initial investors can sell some then, for instant profit.
OFF WITH THEIR HEADS.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
...are now too good for them?
Man if that doesn't spell out the textbook definition of pretentious cocksucker, I don't know what does...
Everyone knows the FaceBook offering isn't worth the FaceValue.
Basically they think that offering it to us based investors may break a securities law. While they might be lying, it should have at least been in the summary.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
The US has disclosure rules that protect investors in companies that have more than 500 investors. Goldman Sachs is creating a scheme where they are the singular investor, but then other investors buy into their shares of Facebook. This prevents Facebook from having to disclose certain information that is considered critical in deciding to invest in a company or not, and allows them to sell shares without informing the public about what they're buying.
This has been on the SEC's radar as potentially totally illegal, as it pretty blatantly is designed to get around this particular rule. The rule is there to protect small investors, and help create a more fair, less manipulated playing field.
Quite frankly, whatever Facebook will become in the future, the current valuations are crazy. This is protecting US investors from taking a bath, as the rule was intended to do in the first place.
The ______ Agenda
They are just covering their asses, the Facebook IPO is just a scheme, so the guys that started it can cash out and run. By offering it only to 'investors' outside the US, they limit their exposure to law suits and shit....
Absolutely. To avoid expensive lawsuits when it turns sour. And to evade investigations from the US regulators. Very prudent indeedy.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I would probably have more to say on this one but Goldman-Sachs and Facebook are both evil. I wish they would just cancel each other out!
Maybe a couple of "Zuckerberg has a big ego" pieces to get some of the people who see through the sex crime allegations, too.
That's how we roll.
Facebook is an American company. Americans are notoriously not so enthralled with Wall Street OR Goldman at the moment.
Americans (don't give me that USian crap, "America" is the name of the country), are most likely to read about privacy issues and most likely to distrust Wall Street and "Corporate America" right now. Why wouldn't they exclude us in the initial rounds of this? Well they think we're the most skeptical of course. We're bad for price inflation. Now Italy, Egypt, New Zealand, Japan, China, to them Facebook is an American juggernaut. If Americans are excluded, heck that's like doing everybody else a favor. They're buying stock in the business model that's making most of it's money harvesting American data. Woohoo!!
If they exclude us, then we can't temper the exuberance.
Goldman Sachs is like the Corleone family of finance. Only infinitely more entrenched in Washington and Wall Street. They know exactly what they're doing.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
Is anyone else noticing that all of those subhuman corporate entities and economists have been freaking out a lot lately? Making weird decisions, hiding under the table, chasing their tail, moving investments out of the US? I think they sense some incoming disaster that we humans wont see until its too late.
Quite possible, GS may be telling the truth here about "intense media coverage." GS folks may not be saints in any sense of the word, but in public perception in US, everything they do currently is unholy. If some US investor looses money in this venture, GS will certainly be blamed, if not sued. Then again, GS may be doing US investors a favor, if Facebook follows MySpace trajectory.
What Goldman was doing was essentially illegal in the US. Facebook is a private company and without opening it's books such a company can't take on more than 499 investors. To skirt this requirement Goldman was acting as a single "investor" but actually just planned to sell shares of it's stake on to it's clients (with hefty commissions). This is a violation of the spirit and possibly the letter of the law, and the SEC stepped in. To take the heat off Goldman is now going to run their scam outside of the US where presumably it's legal.
And yes, this probably is a scam. There are good reasons not to allow public investment in opaque ventures whose value can't be determined, and Goldman is clearly banking on charging oversized commissions because it's selling a product you can't get anywhere else (cause it's illegal, hmm). The first investors will make loads of cash just like in any pump and dump scheme, the suckers will get rolled. The Facebook guys get to cash out, turning some of those pretend billions into real dough before the company goes Myspace. Worthwhile tech ventures will go underfunded and even larger numbers of (dumb) investors will lose confidence in the markets.
Lots of big bucks overseas looking for a place to spend it.
No, they are saying that the US has too many laws that bar advanced scams with securities, hence it is not very profitable to run such scams in the US.
But don't worry - it is very likely that whatever offer was going to be made would have excluded small investors outright; and that those US investors that would have been asked to consider buying into the fund have the offshore units that will allow them to do so now.
Before everybody goes all gung-ho against G-S for this move, think of how many of you would also comment along the lines of "Who would invest in Facebook? It is just another bubble waiting to burst." I'm not qualifying anything there doing, I'm just sayin...
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
No, they're saying they won't sell to US investors because of legal issues arising from the massive amounts of media coverage involved with their own investment in Facebook.
So what, I get some foreign proxy to buy me some? Is there really a difference?
Facebook does not cost that much, its a new bubble. Banks looove bubbles and crisis, only they win in those situations
Get my e-mail after a captcha test in: http://tinymailt
Isn't it hilarious that Goldman Sachs wants to sell a company that contains the citizens of America's personal information to foreign interests and doesn't want to include Americans in on the sale. Hmmm....
I once saw an interview with Zuckerberg (possibly on BBC's click, I don't honestly recall) where he was positively gleeful in refusing to disclose any information about facebooks finances, citing this as being a primary advantage of a private company. I honestly don't think he will float facebook, certainly not before he is looking to jump ship, in which case who the hell is going to want to buy his shares.
My thinking on this is that Zuckerberg went to G.S. looking to raise $1.5B, but flatly refused to offer public stock. G.S. have now since realised that that to raise this much is going to require selling stock to more than 500 investors, and that doing so while remaining a privately traded company in the US is legally difficult, and thus the assumption that by excluding US citizens from the offering they can sidestep the legal requirements for disclosure. They probably took the job on in good faith (or whatever passes for it in investment banking) assuming they could find 150 guys willing to sink $10M a piece, but found a market that still lies awake at night thinking about how badly it got burnt in the dot-com crash, and no-one in their right mind prepared to drop that kind of cash into a company that doesn't sell anything.
then circumvent them, which is what GS is good at doing.
If Goldman Sachs had proceeded with the sale to U.S. investors, there was a risk that regulators could later conclude that media coverage had violated rules for a private placement. If that had happened after the deal, Facebook might have been told to repurchase shares or register as a public company.
FB is wanting to stay as private as possible. Nothing wrong with that.
Just so you know
And of course the post is immediately accompanied by the normal GS-bashing. Hate GS all you want, but this is a tangible example of the US losing its competitiveness to other jurisdictions due to its complex and outdated regulatory regime. Investment opportunities that could have been had by US investors will now go to foreigners. And yes many people think FB is overvalued, but that should be a personal investment decision, not something the government decides for you. This trend will make it increasingly difficult for companies to raise capital in the US. Not a problem for FB as they can source from anywhere, but smaller shops should definitely be concerned by this. And now back to the GS Is Evil channel...
Sounds similar to the actions of several Private torrent trackers recently.
Maybe it's the opposite. Who knows? Maybe they actually think they woefully overvalued Facebook and decided they only want to screw over the foreigners.
"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations..." -Winston Churchill
Basically they think that offering it to us based investors may break a securities law.
Listen, it's 8:51 PM where I am. I'm tired.
I read the sentence as 'us based investors'. Based investors? I don't know what that means so I guess I'm not one of the 'based' investors because I don't know who you 'based' investors are; therefore, you wouldn't consider me to be "one of us".
Thinking it was a typo for 'biased', I wondered how biased an investor you are. it would make sense - investors biased against Goldman Sachs; which therefore, I would be one of those investors. But how would a biased investor break securities law I wondered? We're all biased. So how?
Then again, I see if I capitalize 'us' it's US as in United States. But I realized something, if I read it as all three, then your message becomes completely clear which makes me one of them.
As a tax payer in the US I say to Goldman Sachs -- screw you, give me my money back and the money you made off my money while the idjits at the Fed had lent it to you.
Goldman-Sachs is just trying to CIRCUMVENT them.
There. Fixed that for you.
My new law proposal (which will, of course, as any law does, piss off Republicans ... but that is why I like to propose new laws ... because it pushes their buttons) is that if a stock offering cannot be made to US investors, then it cannot be made at all for any US based company.
Clearly GS is just trying to pressure Congress to remove all laws, so they can proceed to screw everyone. The counter action is to boycott GS and FB.
Oh, and that law would never pass, of course. But it's always fun to push buttons on Republicans and get them to react.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
... Wikileaks publishes details of foreign bank accounts held by US citizens. Which is pretty much in keeping with IRS/Treasury policy.
US investors are feeling more like airline passengers lined up for a TSA fondle all the time. FB isn't interested in the regulator's bullshit and I don't blame them.
Have gnu, will travel.
modder up.
May the lies we live by make us strong, healthy, happy and wise - Kurt Vonnegut.
The SEC regulations for offering shares to US investors are a lot stricter than for non-US. My guess is that they cannot meet the requirements, which I would take as a big red flag that Facebook is severely overvalued right now.
And, they probably -are- protecting the public in this case...companies should not be allowed to sell shares to the public without disclosing important information about themselves.
Maybe this is the future growth export industry in the US: securities fraud of foreign nationals.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Typical M.O. for this group of lowlife scumbags. It would be one thing if only their customers got fleeced, but they manage to pass the bill unto the taxpayer.
There is a special place in hell for these SOBs.
Is they don't want to be nailed for selling junk stock when that house of cards they call Facebook comes down. Meh no bfd they can keep their stock thanks anyway. I'm not some prolific investor but I prefer to invest what little money the government hasn't stolen from me in a real stock with a tangible value.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
I'm sure that if GS discriminates by nationality, it isn't the American nationality that makes a difference.
A banker with a conscience? Hahaha that's the best joke I've heard all night.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
If they drop US investors, some bells did ring at GS lawyers. Trust me on this one, this isn't a good sign. There is a lot of money avaliable on the market now, even in the US.
.com thinking that this valuation will make sense some years ahead I would probably laugh. No .com stays too much time on top. Yahoo had it's time, as AOL, ICQ, and others. I just see only one trend in a near future, devaluation of the stock prices to a reasonable level.
This move probably will give top investors more doubts about the real financial status of Facebook. I think myself the actual valuation is high and if someone is trying to invest in a
The assholes are the people who give away the tax money, not the people who ask for it. The people who control the business of government hold the key to making it happen, not the megacorp executives.
They've liked Bail Outs, Foreign Investment and something called Pyramid Investment Opportunities
The SEC has all sorts of regulations meant to "protect" the public. Goldman-Sachs is just trying to obey them.
LOL... Having been suckered into too many IPOs I agree. Thanks for looking out for us Goldman!
Seriously people, why would you want to buy this? Zuckerman and friends are multi multi millionaires. They did it pretty much by starting with nothing. This is just their chance to cash out before the thing heads south. If they saw much more upside, would they be selling?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
It's now obvious that it's really Goldman Sachs that is the Bank of Evil.
"Of course not, they are the Goldman Sachs; they make their money ripping off the American People."
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Unreal.
If that's the case, then all that US money we pumped into keeping them afloat isn't good enough for them either. I'll take mine back please. I'll put in a local credit union that actually gives a crap about even a small part of America.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
..oh, I don't know, The Chinese. Jesus, I'm so sick of this damn 'American Exceptionalism' crap. Americans are not inherently better than the rest of the world. We just got lucky, that's all (2 week neighbors, easily conquered natives, etc). The world doesn't need us, except as a source of food, and the super-rich aren't going to let poor Americans eat when it's more profitable to sell the food to China.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Well, think of it this way. Once all the foreigners have been screwed over and are dead-broke, the dollar might be worth something again.
See? G-S is just doing what's best for America. ;)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Yup. American investors are being saved from the next salvo in the DotCom scam wars.
Tune in next week, when a dozen Web 3.0 startups have valuations greater than than the GDP of Germany.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
This is what I find really worrisome. As a regulatory body, the SEC is kind of a joke. The bankers can and do get away with almost anything. For GS to exclude the US from the Facebook offering, this has to be a screwjob of such magnitude that even the SEC would have to act.
Robert Cringely is the Best!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why is this a bad thing? Facebook is almost universally hated, even amongst its most avid users. All it will take is the invention of the next big thing and the site will die faster than AOL.
There is a special place in hell for these SOBs.
Congress?
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
So long as the US is willing to overthrow countries who want to trade in other currencies (like Iraq and the Euro), the US dollar will still have value.
It's backed by depleted uranium bullets, and non-depleted uranium in it's nukes.
Even a gold standard would have a hard time matching that.
I contend that for any of G-S' target US customers, moving the sale outside of the US is meaningless. The sale was aimed at high net-worth individuals, and just about any of these people (or their portfolio manager) will be able to participate via their off-shore accounts. The action in the usual off-shore banking establishments, or even through US citizens' above board overseas accounts, will probably prove heavy.
This action is strictly to put off the day of reckoning with the SEC.
Luke, help me take this mask off
No, they're saying they won't sell to US investors because of legal issues arising from the massive amounts of media coverage involved with their own investment in Facebook.
They think this move won't get media coverage? They think that in the age of the Internet, that any media covering any company that large is only national or regional? That doesn't sound like a solid reason to me, though I admit I've witnessed large organizations doing crazier things.
I think they're a bunch of scumbags but I don't think they're stupid. I think this move is designed to avoid SEC scrutiny as others have said. How they can do that when both they and Facebook are US companies is the only part I'm missing. My guess is that the SEC has jurisdictional problems when the victim of a scam is overseas but I really have no idea how that works and I am not a lawyer.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
The SEC regulations for offering shares to US investors are a lot stricter than for non-US. My guess is that they cannot meet the requirements, which I would take as a big red flag that Facebook is severely overvalued right now.
This is an explanation that makes sense. Thank you.
... yet I can't seem to find any real injustice when a site designed to separate fools from their privacy by dangling convenience in front of them also manages to separate fools from their money by dangling promises of easy wealth in front of them. The whole thing seems like water seeking its own level.
I suppose I'm not proud of it, but am I the only one who felt a sense of glee at the idea of Facebook investors getting screwed? Granted, ripping people off is wrong
If my assessment is correct, I want to say it will give people something to reconsider the next time they want to stumble over themselves in order to pile up on the next trendy bandwagon, but I have to admit that's not correct. For both the users and investors, these are people who get caught up in the excitement of an "everybody else is doing it" trend.
A little evaluation would have told them that Facebook is another one of those that will struggle mightily to have any sort of long-term viability (even if it's somehow not overvalued right now). They didn't want to perform even that little bit of dispassionate inquiry. I'd like to think that getting stung badly would give them a new willingness to do that, but I've seen too many other scenarios where this didn't happen. What happens instead is that a victim mentality sets in, it's entirely someone else's fault (i.e. it's a blame game) and the cause-and-effect between one's decision-making and the outcome one experiences is vehemently denied. Then the next momentary trend is sought. Like I said, water seeks its own level.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
What it is is a scheme to get our taxpayer money which we bailed them out with last years out of the country. They invest in a big bubble once more, this time with their bailout money, invest in it from outside the country using shills (so it can't get scrutinized by the local authorities) and then bust the bubble after transferring out all the cash.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Comment removed based on user account deletion
underwritten by goldman sachs
And, they probably -are- protecting the public in this case...companies should not be allowed to sell shares to the public without disclosing important information about themselves. Maybe this is the future growth export industry in the US: securities fraud of foreign nationals.
Yes we've heard this story before. Wallstreet used to export a very clever but very volatile financial instrument called a Mortgage-Backed-Security to the Europeans banks (and anyone else foolish enough to buy them). Wallstreet made lots of money in fees on those deals, and I suppose made the Europeans banks lots of money for awhile. Well until the underlying US mortgages went bad in 2007, and then the European government had to step in to keep their banks solvent.
Wooooooow.
Digital Sky, anyone?
It bothers me that you lump together this whole group of people and assume they're all bad. Or even that most of them are bad. My experience is very different.
Bankers are nice people. In fact, a lot of them are really nice. After all, it's their job to build trust with their clients.
Traders, on the other hand, it's almost in their job description to be an ass.
I smell Jews everywhere..... sigh....
For all those idiots that constantly worry about China "owning" the US because we're all living off a Chinese credit-card. Think about this: If Facebook is sold to the "Chinese" that means money and capital is coming into the US, and it isn't a loan. In fact, basically, if you can sell something that doesn't cost very much to make (Facebook) and is basically a worthless piece of crap for a huge sum of money, you're only reversing any problem with getting loans from China (or from brown people in general).
How long before someone puts out a list of their executives names and addresses along with their offshore bank accounts that they use to hide money from the IRS?
Oh wait...
You might want to mention this story the next time someone tries to blow some "supply-side economics" smoke up your ass. "Trickle-down" indeed.
You are welcome on my lawn.
To: Ugandan Upper-class houshold Dear Sir or Madam, I am a Goldman Sachs Broker in the United States of America. We have been fortunate enough to aquire many millions of dollars in private Facebook stock, but because of govt. red tape, we cannot sell it here. If you would be kind enough to put 25000 in a foreign account and give us that info, we can make sure you get in on this once in a lifetime opportunity! Your American counterparts, Goldman Sachs
At the business end of a guillotine.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Why would you want to buy this? I'll tell you why: Because that first week or so the sheep will cause the price to shoot like a rocket (because they have heard of FB and know it is big) before it crashes hard when reality sets in. Kinda like how you can make a mint on a "pump and dump" if you get in at the bottom and drop them right before it starts to freefall.
But frankly when I hear the words "evil corporation" I automatically think GS. They are the kind of slime that ruin everything they touch while engorging themselves at the same time. Look at their history and you'll see bubbles as far as the eye can see going back almost to its foundation. Frankly the best thing we here in the US could do for the world is dissolve GS and throw as many of those swindlers under a jail as possible, but sadly our government is riddled with GS "alumni" that make sure their beloved GS ALWAYS comes out ahead. GS is living proof that even after 200 years the words of the great Thomas Jefferson still ring true. How sad that all those years ago he could see the truth when so many today simply bury their heads in the sand and scream "free market!" as the answer to all of the USA's ills.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
A bunch of people who have never paid taxes, grandstanding about policies that they do not control, shaking their fists a people they will never meet, crying softly alone as they touch themselves to sleep.
Everything is going to be all right, slash-a-dot, slash-a-dot
Everything is going to be all right, slash-a-dot, slash-a-dot
And even when they laugh it sounds like a meme, They write their congressmen, blowing off steam. They demand that their website not be pay-walled,. But the've never been on without adblock and no-flash installed.
Everything is going to be all right, slash-a-dot, slash-a-dot
Everything is going to be all right, slash-a-dot, slash-a-dot
It wasn't the "European banks" that got hurt from the mortgage-backed bunkum. They were made whole to the tune of 100 cents on the dollar. The people who are paying for it are the same ones that are paying for it over here. You and me. Our parents. Our kids.
They are creating a "breakaway" culture, who within decades will be the only ones with access to capital, to new technologies, to advanced health care. That's the ultimate effect of the dramatic increase in wealth disparity. Fifty years of this and they'll be as far ahead of the rest of us as the American settlers were of the Native Americans. When two cultures exist side-by-side and one is so far in advance of the other, it doesn't work out well for the ones on the bottom. We are seeing evolutionary branching based on wealth alone.
You are welcome on my lawn.
First they doubled the worth of facebook, something even facebook would not have thought possible. Now they are selling the hot baloon to the rest of the world insulating Americans from the scam. In fact, I do consider facebook as nothing but massive social suicidal mistake; people making mistakes and letting others make the same mistake as well, and over the time everybody are in the same pit. Facebook put a price tag on these mistakes. GS doubled it and are selling high.Way to go Goldie.
Oh my god for some mod points ... and a new keyboard ...
Facebook were actually worth anything like they say it is worth.
As it is, I am content to let all the foreigners lose their money on this Turkey.
Like the inimitable Groucho Marx, I would never join a club that would have me as a member.
Basically, you said what I was thinking. Non-US investors aren't covered by the SEC, so the media coverage won't affect the legality of soliciting foreign investors. The media coverage would, however, have led to problems with fair disclosure for investors in the US.
This article gives an overview of what Goldman Sachs will be giving investors and it isn't pretty.
The investor needs to put in at least $2mil and GS will take 4.5% in fees and another 5% of any profit earned. The real kicker is the investors can't sell until 2013, while GS reserves the right to cash out whenever they want without giving any warning. If the share price drops, GS will happily bail out, leaving their customers holding the bag. Again.
Overall it's an awful deal, unless you have a lot of cash to burn and somehow think that the Facebook of 2013 will be worth more than its currently overpriced 2011 version.
... The exclusion of US investors is unlikely to affect plans for Facebook to raise the $1.5bn, although it will mean some wealthy individuals and companies being denied a chance to buy into a fast-growing firm ...
Sure US based investment firms may not be able to participate but their US clients could just open up an account at a Europe investment firm. I'm not sure how an otherwise qualified US individual is really being denied participation.
Maybe this is the future growth export industry in the US: securities fraud of foreign nationals.
Well they basically spent the last decade exporting fraudulent debt, so it seems like a logical progression...
Goldman didn't need a bailout - they were made an offer they couldn't refuse.
Too bad about New York - it was the financial center of the world, last century.
To be an effective trader, basically what you do is step in to a transaction between two people and shove them far enough apart that they can't communicate. Then you go to the seller, tell them that you and your buddies are their only market and you will pay them $XYZ for everything they have. A real low-ball figure. Do your best to put them in the fucking poor house.
You then take whatever you bought to the person who was already interested in buying it, and tell them you and your buddies are the only source for whatever it is you bought, and if they want any of it they'll have to pay you $XXYYZZ. An absurdly overvalued figure. Do your best to put them in the fucking poor house.
What's going on is that traders at no point are about facilitating exchanges between two parties. Every step of the way, their goal is to screw everybody who's still holding a single red cent so hard that their fillings fall out, and then collect those fillings -- gold, too, is an investment.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
Christ, Helium is getting expensive, nowadays.
...to the public without disclosing important information about themselves.
I thought facebook disclosed all information about the public to themselves.
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
American investors smart enough to know that Facebook is already over valued.
Typical M.O. for this group of lowlife scumbags. It would be one thing if only their customers got fleeced, but they manage to pass the bill unto the taxpayer.
There is a special place in hell for these SOBs.
Right next to the child molesters, and people who talk at the theater?
Extra points if they post it on Facebook.
I bet 100% of the investors are going to short that stock big time. No way I am buying into the eventual public IPO.
When Facebook goes public, it will the very definition of a bubble. The company's tangible physical assets are probably less than $500 million. In some objective sense, they are measuring value based on the actual number of Facebook users.
This means they are dependent upon the interest of users to maintain that value. So was AOL, so was Compuserve, so were a lot of other things that lost a lot of value in a very short time.
I get the same sense I did when I saw the AOL deal go through. WTF, this cannot be right. I can't tell you what kind of game changing, cataclysmic innovation is going to affect their value, but it's going to emerge.
How did this get modded +3? Criminal hiding of income by US citizens from the IRS has NOTHING to do with supply side economics or trickle down theories. If you don't understand the concepts, don't mod out your rear end.
NON-geek Linux user since 1998
GS took billions of $US bailout. Now they are deliberately sticking those taxpayers in the eye. Goodbye Facebook, but even more, goodbye GS.
I'm gonna go the opposite way and say FB shares are severely undervalued. The amount of information that people willingly give FB is staggering. If you a marketer, you are chomping at the bit for FB to open that access even more. If your investor and are able to get in now, I would do it in a heart beat, because Day 1, 09:30:01 those shares are gonna rocket higher and faster than Mentos in a Diet Coke bottle (and they are not coming back in).
Regards,
MBC1977,
I suppose I'm not proud of it, but am I the only one who felt a sense of glee at the idea of Facebook investors getting screwed?
No.
In general, it is safe and legal to kill your children. -- POSIX Programmer's Guide
Corruption can take place in any economic system (communist countries are notorious for graft, too) and that is exactly what this is an example of. Don't make this a conservative/liberal thing, when it most definitely is not.
Let's remember that BOTH a Dem and a Repub president have supported this garbage. You thought Haliburton was bad, the graft going on with G-S is FAR worse than Haliburton ever hoped to be.
Where's the party in the back?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Corruption can take place in any economic system (communist countries are notorious for graft, too) and that is exactly what this is an example of. Don't make this a conservative/liberal thing, when it most definitely is not.
Seems to be more of a human thing, I'd say.
Sky's Alive, your post is the one.
I had a massive 4-part re-spin of your comment in flux, but then I wiped it for being too depressing. Let's just say this:
At the same time we're about to get a lot of "Everyone must sacrifice to pay down the debt" government rhetoric, the Gov bails out Goldman Sachs. Meanwhile Mr. Z. somehow convinces parents who decided to skip myspace that finally Facebook Is It, the place to post every personal detail they have. Remember the folks last week who wanted to make it the internet passport?
Then American company Goldman Sachs takes the US Taxpayer bailout money and uses it to float foreign shares of American company Facebook holding the lives of millions of Americans, while denying US taxpayers the right to buy the shares of the company they put their lives on.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Except wrapped up in this Kelin-Bottle mess is that Facebook managed to be the first non-email company to convince "Middle America" that they should put their whole lives on it, "because everyone is doing it". So one day when Facebook goes wrong, that database will be the biggest identity theft risk ever known.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
See the post about splitting you and the seller. FB shares are severely (something) wherein you can't imagine precisely where between infinity and zero they reside. GS will probably play the scheme QUADRA, so they can do both the rise profits AND the shortsell profits.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
This is just their chance to cash out before the thing heads south. If they saw much more upside, would they be selling?
You mean Facebook is finally going to die? Really? REALLY? That's wonderful news!
The real point is the fact Facebook actually has no real value.
Nice scam.
Every single thing that US gov't ends up trying to protect US citizens from backfires. It's the same thing with US government's foreign policy - all of it eventually backfires.
FDIC and 1-0% interest and Freddie/Fannie and all capital destroying regulations backfired and created one bubble after another, the last one will bring down US bonds and US dollar.
SEC is part of US government, creating regulations that should not exist. SEC should not exist.
The FB deal (though I could not care less about FB) is about not disclosing their information publicly. But their information will go to the stock holders. The stock holders will have their prospectuses, but they are entering a partnership.
There is NOTHING WRONG with a partnership - where company's stock is held by a number of individuals who agree to a number of rules, like in this case, one of the rules is that the individuals cannot trade the stock on secondary markets until 2013.
Do you want to be protected from participating in a partnership by SEC? Well, you got it.
Quite a huge number of people were 'protected' by SEC before the housing bubble blew from shorting and eventually they were protected from becoming wealthier. Good going, but that's what gov't is doing.
All of the /. anger about this GS move is misplaced. Now, personally I wouldn't be buying the FB shares, it's just not something I believe in, maybe I am wrong, but I rather be wrong than sorry. But the reason GS is doing this is not to fuck with US somehow. No. The reason is because the US gov't is fucking with US citizens.
US gov't does not consider you to be adults. They haven't for a long time. Since the moment the Fed was created and they started buying your votes with your money. Well, maybe you aren't adults. Or maybe the adults are running the show, and the eternal teens are running around, being herded. Well, you know what happens with a herd eventually? It's eaten.
SEC wouldn't allow a partnership to be formed in US that wouldn't comply with public rules. Well, a partnership is only 'public' as far as the public that owns the stock. But it's not them, who won't be getting the information. It's SEC and the public who doesn't own the stock.
If you are public who doesn't own the stock and you would buy the stock without any of that information, that's your business. But SEC won't let you. Hey, maybe you are gambling, but where in the US Constitution does it say that US gov't has the authority to prevent you from gambling? The US gov't is counterfeiting money - they have no authority to do that either.
Anyway, US citizens are becoming prisoners of their own gov't - can't have Swiss bank accounts, can't own FB stock, can't have a sane country that's not in war every year, can't have capital to have real jobs. All because of gov't.
They say that the people deserve their gov't. Look in the mirror - do you?
You can't handle the truth.
Given Facebook's IPO will probably be quickly be proceeded by its demise, GS is probably doing Americans a favor.
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
"Human"
Oh no you don't, you're not letting the commies off that easy.
And, they probably -are- protecting the public in this case...companies should not be allowed to sell shares to the public without disclosing important information about themselves.
Maybe this is the future growth export industry in the US: securities fraud of foreign nationals.
Future growth industry? Dude, in the industry everyone knows not to touch US onshore investors. It's too messy in terms of documentation, and it gives the SEC powers to look at your investors from other countries. Everything US is done via offshore entities to prevent this. I'm surprised everyone thinks this is news.
Fractional lending involves over leverage and yes that happens plenty; the limitations/regulations on that fraction as well as a physical limitation prevented the downward spirals around the world competing for investment and economic growth; so the next logical step was to remove the limitations and by going abstract as well as moving conceptually from CREDIT to DEBT allowed lending to continue towards the maximum levels possible-- trumping the escalation that was going on already. Its less a matter of GOLD and more one of the continual progression down into the rabbit hole with no utopia in sight and the path is not infinite.
We never really moved far from the physical, we simply moved from the 1 fixed item of gold to whatever makes your money worth using which was OIL -- its all about oil dollars and how you needed dollars to buy oil until recent years as it migrates and diversifies plus other factors undermine the reasons to have dollars; lowering their relative value in addition to the high (and unreported) inflation etc. It'll get worse as OIL becomes less important and US exports continue to dry up-- the only thing left will be the US Stock exchanges (Casinos) which operate in dollars. We need to corner the COFFEE market with US dollars to make up for the OIL decline (the 2nd most traded commodity) or we could enter into water privatization which some want to create as the new OIL. The next generation of this game is likely to move away from a few global necessities like coffee, water, maybe CO2 but some sort of system around the economic growth of nations which has nothing to do with lifestyle or even probably production - more like new gambling games as we see new games invented in the USA, almost desperately (Enron)-- nations competing for "investment" to raise the value in their money; again something we see more and more in the USA-- the old capital system being dumped by the investors and left for small banks and the government to do loans because they are less and less interested in REAL items. (to the point where they don't even bother to hold onto the paper work for your house they want to kick you out from.)
I'm possibly not being as clear as I'd like on this; hope the general idea is there. I can't see it becoming completely baseless but it can be so removed from the tangible you never know what you bought.... Maybe it could be almost entirely devoid of reality?
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Does everyone here actually believe GS needed a bailout? Oh dear...how little people know about GS. The following quote should tell you more than enough about Goldman's stance on the bailout it received: "Thanks to these spectacularly large taxpayer-funded bailouts, Goldman was able to continue 'doing God’s Work' – as CEO Lloyd Blankfein infamously remarked" This is all a game, don't get drawn in to the GS bashing - simply learn and capitalise. If you're in the business of making money, you become an expert at making money, as has GS. Same as any other profession - be it programming, consultant surgeon etc. Life is not about what is fair and what is right - simply survival of the fittest. Simply educate yourselves in the respective field you wish to master and then learn to play the game. Most ./-ters are smarter than GS bankers, trust me.
Of course if the lower end still has access to freedom and plenty of bomb making materials life can get annoying for the upper culture if they try to push this too far. Also with the exception of the dynastic families not all rich people think it's a good idea ... the forces on government might all be monied, but they are not of one mind.
Also in a democracy it takes an awful lot of propaganda to keep such a system in place ... it only takes one FDR to unwind decades worth of private debt and turn the clock back.
To: Ugandan Upper-class houshold
Dear Sir or Madam,
I am a Goldman Sachs Broker in the United States of America. We have been fortunate enough to aquire many millions of dollars in private Facebook stock, but because of govt. red tape, we cannot sell it here. If you would be kind enough to put 25000 in a foreign account and give us that info, we can make sure you get in on this once in a lifetime opportunity!
Your American counterparts,
Goldman Sachs
To arrive at the comment above is exactly why reading /. is worth every prior moment of drivel. Irony! Humor! jkyrlach, I am now your fan!
Live Long and Prosper - Thanks Leonard. You are missed.
Arguably, it's not criminal.
Bear with me here.
It's an issue with any country that has a complicated tax system. You have a byzantine set of laws, many of which could reasonably be interpreted in a number of ways.
Now for most of us with fairly simple tax requirements, the way in which those laws should be interpreted is well-known within the accounting profession and thoroughly settled through numerous lawsuits - there's not a lot of room for manoeuvre. But for these guys, with their millions - it's worth paying an accountant to find loopholes.
There's plenty of loopholes, and quite often what the accountant is doing is simply looking at a way of interpreting a particular piece of legislation which works out in their clients favour. If the tax office decides that they don't like that interpretation - well, it'll have to be tested in a court of law then. That'll take a while, of course, and it'll cost a fair chunk of cash. Further, IANAL but I imagine that if it's all kept open (you're not trying to avoid tax, simply limit your liability - something which we're all entitled to do, but for most of us there's a limit to how much effort it's worth going to to do so), worst case scenario is you'll have to pay the tax along with penalties and interest. If the money you pay back has been making better money as an investment than the tax office demands in interest, you're still onto a winner. Prison time is more likely to happen if it can be demonstrated you were blatantly defrauding the tax office (by under-declaring something), not creatively interpreting law (by declaring you received £N but you immediately did something else with it which means you shouldn't pay tax on it).
(Note: IANAL, nor an accountant. If you rely on this rather than professional advice to keep out of trouble, you're an idiot)
Remember, when you needed an edu address to get into FB? Or when it had a somewhat sane and understandable privacy policy?
This is just the same! First, only uber-rich Non-Americans can invest. (Of course, uber-rich Americans will just funnel money through a shell company in the Caymans.) Then, when (if) Facebook ever does a profit or has some sensible business plan other than selling out the privacy of their users, they will get SEC approval. At some point, the masses will be able to take part in the Facebook Financial Dream [tm]. In the end, when the scam has run its course, the stock will crash and crumble.
Facebook is going the way of AOL. If they get lucky they'll turn into Yahoo.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Mod parent up.
Or is it just a spin and US "institutional" investors (you would need millions $ to participate according to what I read in the newspaper) were not willing to pay for it (AOL and myspace used to be quite popular too... ).
Facebook is going south and everyone knows it. Its not about if, its about just how long it stays up before the novelty wears off and people migrate to the next big thing in masses. Facebook is a fun trainwreck to watch just as Second Life was when some stupid idiots paid millions to create even virtual embassies. Log in to Second Life and take a look around, thats the kind of desolate landscape Facebook will be shortly.
Anyone buying stock in Facebook deserves to part from their money.
HTTP/1.1 400
Yes. Pretty much standard operating procedure for Goldman. I assume they aren't playing in the US for fear of the regulatory authorities. They are free to scam everywhere else, however!
Not if the rich own "homeland security".
You are welcome on my lawn.
Let's remember that "supply-side" economics has been the approach of BOTH Dem and Repub administrations since Reagan, even in the face of its complete failure.
I'm not making it a Dem/Repub issue and I'm certainly not making it a "conservative/liberal" thing. Supply-side economics is certainly not a "conservative" idea. It's an idea that's meant to funnel money from the bottom to the top, nothing more.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The minimum investment requirement was $2 million dollars, so yes the small guy would have been left out unless a collective was formed
Let's remember that "supply-side" economics has been the approach of BOTH Dem and Repub administrations since Reagan, even in the face of its complete failure.
Complete failure for who exactly? Depending on your perspective it could be considered a resounding success.
Goldman Sachs can take their business and shove... [THE BODY OF THIS COMMENT WAS DELETED BY THE AUTHOR TO SAVE HIMSELF THE RIDICULE OF RECEIVING MULTIPLE -1 FLAMEBAIT MODS, OR A FEW +1 INTERSTING MODS]. So that's what I think of Goldman Sachs.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
No no no. A "special" place in regular Hell. Not Rev. Book's "Special Hell".
These types of deals almost always have provisions that prevent key executives from selling shares for a certain period of time. Usually between six months and two years. Goldman is putting money into the company, not buying a piece of the company from its current owners.
That last sentence brought visions of the entire American culture being the spittin' image of Aqua Team Hunger Force.
Thank you, that was a great vision.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Unfortunately, Facebook will die about as quickly as Myspace and BSD...
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
The pool of fools to dump this crap on has shrunk by more that half by excluding US people. So their fees are that much less plus IPO price will be less since there is lesser demand.
Somehow I do not feel bad for US persons. :-)
goldman sachs hasn't been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law because they're in collusion with their operatives in the white house. check out the resumes of the executive branch, and you'll find a bunch of ex-goldman sachs employees (who likely still have stock in that evil, horrible place)
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Why would you want to buy this? I'll tell you why: Because that first week or so the sheep will cause the price to shoot like a rocket (because they have heard of FB and know it is big) before it crashes hard when reality sets in. Kinda like how you can make a mint on a "pump and dump" if you get in at the bottom and drop them right before it starts to freefall.
To be fair, a lot of slashdorers said the same thing about Google. Going public at $85/share was clearly a crass attempt by the insiders to cash out before the imminent crash, and everyone who bought at that price was hoping to resell quickly to the sheep because everyone knows there's no profit in ad-supported web sites.
0 1 - just my two bits
The SEC regulations for offering shares to US investors are a lot stricter than for non-US. My guess is that they cannot meet the requirements, which I would take as a big red flag that Facebook is severely overvalued right now.
One might also say that the laws involving private property ownership are 'stricter' in Zimbabwe. In either case, I would indeed take it as a red flag not to invest there.
Umm... Been following WikiLeaks lately? You just might be about to get your wish!
GS has a reputation for scams. They bought up a bunch of debt for 70 percent its worth and got the government to guarantee the full 100 percent return. GS is pretty bad, and our government is worse.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Why would you want to buy this? I'll tell you why: Because that first week or so the sheep will cause the price to shoot like a rocket
They cannot sell before 2013. These sheep *are* the suckers; whats amazing to my horribly uncomplicated mind is how anyone can think this is a good deal (what with the excessive 4.5% fee's, and cropping an profit (but not the losses) to 95%).
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
'Complete failure for who exactly?'
We The People, perhaps?
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Uh, yes it is. A central bank.
Something to consider. Zuckerburg is still driving his POS Nissan. Still lives in his modest little cookie cutter house in the burbs. Facebook value is pure vapor. An investor to make money off this would have to have the timing of Bugs Bunny stepping off a falling elevator before it hits the ground.
You should hear the one about the politician/attorney who had morals...
Does anyone else smell a tinge of Le Grande Terror, the French revolution, in this? Caste systems don't work without a religious backing and major wealth disparity causes civil insurrection.
They are creating a "breakaway" culture, who within decades will be the only ones with access to capital, to new technologies, to advanced health care. That's the ultimate effect of the dramatic increase in wealth disparity. Fifty years of this and they'll be as far ahead of the rest of us as the American settlers were of the Native Americans. When two cultures exist side-by-side and one is so far in advance of the other, it doesn't work out well for the ones on the bottom. We are seeing evolutionary branching based on wealth alone.
Things sometimes happen differently. France, for example, once had such a "breakaway" culture.
At some point, when the classes are so disparate, folks start fetching guillotines.
Does anyone else see the irony in their name?
How charming. They are so cute at this age.
I was thinking the same thing. Looking at the valuation, what GS invested for a very small piece, and what their leaked profits have been, they are doing everyone in the US a favor by the sounds of it.
Would anyone here care to speculate as to the real reasons Goldman Sachs decided to exclude the US from the Facebook offering?
THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS!
There is a special place in hell for these SOBs.
Congress?
Please mod this up!
And, they probably -are- protecting the public in this case...companies should not be allowed to sell shares to the public without disclosing important information about themselves. Maybe this is the future growth export industry in the US: securities fraud of foreign nationals.
Really? Why is that? Give me a structural argument backed with empirical evidence in the costs vs benefits of public disclosure. It defies neat categorization as either good or bad.
And what kind of information is "important"? Investors who are offered a slice of the Facebook special purpose vehicle will most certainly be given material insider information. Do not assume just because you lack certain information that those with the opportunity to invest do so as well.
What the hell are you talking about? How are "the rich" going to magically keep everybody else from acquiring and using technology? Explain how this will happen without using any made-up statistics. The history of technology as a great equalizer seems to put the lie to what you assert.
Will technology be "too expensive"? But it's always "too" expensive when it's new. And there are always early adopters with enough money to buy it anyhow. Then the rest of us smirk at them and wait for the next rev and the 40% price drop that is inevitable.
Yes, except the one on the bottom isn't going anywhere. Without the one on the bottom, there is no top. Those of us on the bottom are actually in complete control as our lives will experience little change if the ones on top cease to exist or go bankrupt or whatever.
All it will take to flip the coin is the ones on the bottom realizing they have the power and banding together to do something about it. This is a pretty natural and recurring cycle throughout history.
Of course, whine, moan and bitch as I will about the things going on right now, we really are NO WHERE NEAR the point that anything is going to change.
We're basically slaves at this point. The only difference is, the slaves of America actually had shitty lives, our modern day life ... not so much. Working long hours to pay off the debt for the things we bought when we never should have may suck, but its absolutely nothing like working long hours because if you don't your owner will beat you to a pulp, sell you or your family members to someone else, or simply kill you and be done with it. When we start thinking of rape as a better alternative to how we are being treated, THEN something will change. Until then we'll just keep playing our Xboxes and bitching on the Internet about how people are evil.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
That's what the "globalization" of the 1990's was about - internationalizing the institutional enfranchisement of the corporation that had occurred in the previous decade within national boundaries, per Reagan, Thatcher, etc.
In the corporation, greed is an ethical imperative, rather than a fault or a vice. This is why there is a fundamental conflict between that which is corporate and that which is human. Choose a side, or one will be decreed for you.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
And you get your information on what "traders" do from where, exactly?
The main way is through using "intellectual property".
Remember how the internet was supposed to have a democratizing effect by giving everyone access to worldwide communication? You may have noticed that it's not working out that way. There has been greater disparity after the Internet came into being than before. What do you think the entire Net Neutrality battle is about? "Prioritizing" data means exactly what it sounds like. Giving priority to the data of certain people. I don't know how old you were, but that's not the way the Internet used to work.
And "dropping prices" is not nearly an immutable law. How are the "dropping prices" working out when it comes to health care?
You think that just because you can get a good deal on a high-def TV that it means we have a level playing field. It's actually having the opposite effect.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Supply-side economics is certainly not a "conservative" idea. It's an idea that's meant to funnel money from the bottom to the top, nothing more.
And that is exactly the sort of use of the state power which *defines* the political right and conservatism. Remember, reps of the crown, church, and aristocracy sat on the *right* of the aisle and the reps of the people sat on the *left*. That's where the words came from and they predate the invention of Liberalism.
Once Liberalism was invented ( individual liberty is paramount, absolutely a completely different political position than either the right or the left ), both the left and the right hated it as they are both big state philosophies.
*Conservatism* was coined to mean anti-Liberal. In the good sense of Liberal, not the current idiotic US usage. And Conservatism sure as shit doesn't mean anything about small government , fiscal responsibility, individual liberty or anything of the sort and never has. It's about returning to the days of feudal lords, kings and the masses keeping their place or being taught their place.
The words "conservative" and "liberal" mean something different in the United States from what they mean anywhere else in the known universe.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Breaking big corporations into smaller companies will create new jobs.
Govt must constitute a panel to rewrite US Constitution and Quran
There are only 2 ways we can 'consistently' make profits in stock markets.
1. Front running
2. Insider trading
Govt must constitute a panel to rewrite US Constitution and Quran
The words "citizen" and "subject" are just as misleading as you have pointed out the words "liberal" and "conservative" to be.
I didn't say I don't vote. I just don't believe the solutions will come from which party is in power.
The power that has to be used is our power to not enable the corporatocracy.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Do you know who you're talking to? I would have voted for Bill goddamn Ayers if he'd been running in '08, for god's sake, and that's not a joke (he's a colleague and friend of mine here in Chicago, in fact). I wouldn't vote for a "fringe of the right-wing" candidate any more than I'd assume that you're too ignorant to understand my argument just because you jumped to a conclusion and shot your mouth off.
When I talk about "not enabl(ing) the corporatocracy", I'm referring to our ability to strike, to boycott and to otherwise disrupt the economic war that's being waged on us by the "neo-feudalist billionaires" that you accurately mention.
I'm the son and grandson and nephew and cousin of organized labor. For me, John L Lewis is as important a figure as Martin Luther King Jr when it comes to civil rights in America, and point to the attack on labor unions as the first shot in the current struggle.
You thought I was saying "there's no difference between Democratic and Republican Party" when I was really saying "we're aiming too low" by focusing on elections because corporate power has so co-opted governmental authority and the mechanics of those elections to have practically made them worthless. I wasn't saying "don't vote Democratic", I was saying "it may be too late for it to matter".
Because you didn't take the time to understand what I was saying, and because you jumped to conclusions about me, I forbid you from taking part in this discussion any further until you've reflected upon the mistakes you have made. Now go stand with your face to the cloakroom wall until you've learned your lesson.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Except wrapped up in this Kelin-Bottle mess is that Facebook managed to be the first non-email company to convince "Middle America" that they should put their whole lives on it, "because everyone is doing it". So one day when Facebook goes wrong, that database will be the biggest identity theft risk ever known.
Yes, it will. That's why I said it separates fools from their privacy. They're fools because they don't think of these things.
If something bad becomes of it, it is because they brought it upon themselves. There's no victim here, only people making bad decisions and making themselves vulnerable to an undesirable outcome. They do so voluntarily. Therefore this is cause-and-effect, not injustice.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Read all about the SC Sound Money Economic Summit in Columbia on Feb. 7. on the website and get your ticket to hear Dr. Edwin Vierra, Larry Parks and others offer solutions in the state government.
The South Carolina Economic Summit
February 7, 2011 at 5:30 pm
300 Senate Street, Columbia, SC 29201
The SC Sound Money Committee invites everyone to the South Carolina Economic Summit the evening of February 7th at 5:30 pm EST. This summit is to educate both legislators and Patriots in preparation for the historic Joint House/Senate Hearing on Sound Money, February 8, 2011 at 4:00 pm EST. Urge your elected representative, both house and senate to attend the Summit, and especially, the Joint House/Senate Hearing.