As IF Times

link The Facebook IPO – US Business News — Facebook Weighs Possible Listing With NYSE: Sources – CNBC.

It’s a heaping double helping of schadenfreude for most people as we witness the colossal cluster eff that the Facebook IPO has become.  What was hyped to be the most spectacular public offering in history has devolved into a bad Greek wedding-like fiasco of lies, deceit, finger pointing and likely lawsuits.   You can’t make this stuff up.

The game was stacked with star players from the outset.  Harvard grad creates world changing software platform.  Top echelon investment bank Morgan Stanley advising and underwriting along with the rest of the Wall Street elite.  Rock stars and hedge funds allocated founder shares.  And of course, a namebrand that virtually everyone knows.  Finally, the popular media frothing up the ordinary folk with projections of outlandish valuations.  What could go wrong?

Well except for the newly enriched insiders,  it all went wrong.  The common link connecting  all of the participants was plain old simple greed.  As Gordon Gekko so elegantly stated in the 1987 film “Wall Street”, “greed is good”.  I won’t deny the basic tenet of this argument, since what it really means is that without a desire to achieve more, there exists only a stagnant complacency.  This complacency leads to rot and groupthink.

But pairing up greed with complacency, now you’ve got problems.  It’s a fair bet that very few people actually read the offering document except the lawyers who were paid to write it.  Anyone who has ever seen one of those monstrosities knows that all the caveats and warnings enclosed are about as useful as the warnings on cigarette packages.  People buy stocks because they are told to.  They rely on the advice of financial advisers, consultants, friends and of course, cab drivers in really bullish markets.  As in many aspects of our lives, we rely less on our own common sense  and judgement and depend more on ‘experts’ to make decisions for us.

The free market works.  It rewards well calculated risk taking but it also punishes ill thought out schemes.  All of the current talk about lawsuits about the ‘failed’ offering are ludicrous.  As if someone should reimburse you for losing money on an investment.   This implies that there should have been a profit and that it should have been guaranteed.  Next thing you know, people will be rioting in the streets thinking  they have a right to a job making 100k a year.   Ivory tower types take note; there are many learned theories of how things work and many of  these theories can be made to sound convincing.  But the crucible of the  real world is where  theories are tested.   Unfortunately in real life, we can’t just reset the theory by starting over, we live with our mistakes.

link There’s a mini ice age coming, says man who beats weather experts.

If this article is accurate, it makes you wonder about the label “expert”.  If the “experts” are generally proven wrong, why would they be called upon for advice?   It’s as if the place kicker for the New York Giants missed all of his field goal tries.  Is he an “expert” place kicker?  Why should the world listen to this lone voice, Piers Corbin, on his forecasts for weather patterns and probabilities when he is endowed with only a computer, a telescope and lots of historical data?  He is up against the accepted mainstream of meteorological thinking with unlimited resources.  I can think of one compelling one:  he’s been right.  According to the article:

“…He seems to get it right about 85 per cent of the time and serious business people – notably in farming – are starting to invest in his forecasts. In the eyes of many punters, he puts the taxpayer-funded Met Office to shame. How on earth does he do it?  He studies the Sun.  He looks at the flow of particles from the Sun, and how they interact with the upper atmosphere, especially air currents such as the jet stream, and he looks at how the Moon and other factors influence those streaming particles…”

Hmm, now there’s some frizzy haired theory, the sun exerts more influence on the earth’s climate then people driving SUV’s.  It’s amazing he hasn’t been locked up in a padded room.  Daring to provide forecasts that go against the popular groupthink scientific culture, he manages to best them all with his forecasts.  Maybe he’s a witch.  Rational people, much less scientists, should be assessing Mr. Corbin’s  methods since they seem to track reality a little better than the alarmists’ forecasts which inconveniently are the opposite of what is observed in real life.  Rational people could have come to the same conclusion of course by merely observing who was spreading the global warming fertilizer in the first place.  A lawyer cum politician cum environmental evangelist.  They could assess the braintrust supporting the apocalyptic forecasts of the GW crowd,  which includes such as the soon to be ex Governor of California, The Terminator himself, Arnold Schwarzennegger.  Recently, our hero invoked a statement in support of his interest in working as an environmental czar for the Obama administration.   He said:

“..I’m a big believer in environmental issues,” Schwarzenegger said, who added that he wanted a post where he could use his “celebrity power … knowledge and experience” to impact public policy. “I’ve traveled the world. … I’m very familiar with the world…”

This from a guy whose grocery getter is a Hummer H1 and who commutes to work by private jet.  As far as ” very familiar with the world”, I’m sure it will get the same notoriety as Sarah Palin’s alleged ” I can see Russia” comment.  Not.

I would think it behooves people in the policy making racket to pay attention to Mr. Corbin with his 85% accuracy record as opposed to the Celebrity and Political glitterati with their somewhat less impressive 0% accuracy record.  But that’s coming from a numbers guy.  If only Corbin’s forecasts weren’t such an inconvenient truth.