As I write this, Mark Zuckerberg is holding his first conference call for Facebook investors, as he reports quarterly results. The stock is now down 18% on the day at its current After Hours price of $24. It's also down 36% from the IPO price and -46% from the first day high i.e. Wall Street's biggest IPO fiasco ever, by far. From high to low the stock has lost $45 billion in market cap in just two months - an amount that exceeds the GDP of 130 countries.
A 28 year old with no business experience as CEO of a $100b company - what could go wrong?
No stock or company epitomises the Idiocracy more than this one. Here is a company that two months ago was valued at $100 billion, yet it's managed by a 28 year old who has no previous business experience. He never had to climb even one rung on the corporate ladder. He never had to spend one day in the corporate trenches. Yet, somehow investors just assumed that a 28 year old with no real world experience could manage a multinational corporation accorded a market cap of $100 billion.
All We Need Are Good Ideas (we can get someone else to do that hard stuff)
And no surprise, the Wall Street MBA boneheads who launched Faceberg straight to the bottom, are of the same ilk as the Corporate MBAs who outsourced all of the jobs and industries to China. After all, why do all of those things we used to do - that's a lot of hard work ! All we really need to sustain us for the next 30 years are some good ideas. Ideas and Top Ramen.
All We Need Are Good Ideas (we can get someone else to do that hard stuff)
And no surprise, the Wall Street MBA boneheads who launched Faceberg straight to the bottom, are of the same ilk as the Corporate MBAs who outsourced all of the jobs and industries to China. After all, why do all of those things we used to do - that's a lot of hard work ! All we really need to sustain us for the next 30 years are some good ideas. Ideas and Top Ramen.
Today's Best and Brightest are Neither
Back in 1968, the year I was born, America's best and brightest were working overtime to launch a 6 million pound rocket into space and then catapult a capsule with 3 men 200,000 miles to the moon and back. A feat they accomplished 8 times over 5 years, for good measure.
Fast forward 44 years and today's so-called "best and brightest" are either on Wall Street, trading pieces of paper back and forth in a zero sum game, or they are building web applications that allow bored housewives to trade virtual farm animals back and forth (in a zero sum game).
What the Fuck Happened?
Back in 1968, the year I was born, America's best and brightest were working overtime to launch a 6 million pound rocket into space and then catapult a capsule with 3 men 200,000 miles to the moon and back. A feat they accomplished 8 times over 5 years, for good measure.
Fast forward 44 years and today's so-called "best and brightest" are either on Wall Street, trading pieces of paper back and forth in a zero sum game, or they are building web applications that allow bored housewives to trade virtual farm animals back and forth (in a zero sum game).
What the Fuck Happened?
