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We didn’t want to have to do this but someone is buying themselves a lot of positive PR to offset a movie which, as far as we can tell, mostly tells the truth. Here is the spin :
On Friday, Mr. Zuckerberg announced his biggest expenditure to date: a $100 million grant aimed at improving public education in Newark, in partnership with Cory A. Booker, the city’s mayor, and Chris Christie, New Jersey’s governor.
Mr. Zuckerberg’s gift, which he announced during an appearance with Mr. Booker and Mr. Christie on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” instantly propelled him to the top echelons of American philanthropy and made him something of a hero.
And here is the problem with the above. Like nearly every other fringe media outlet on the planet, the NY Times purposely left off two words when describing the $100 million dollars.
In Stock.
In reality Marky has not given anyone anything but air. Completely illogical people are saying for no reason founded in reality that Facebook, Inc. is worth $33 billion dollars. If that were true, then Facebook, Inc. would have a P/E rating 7.5 x more than Google, Inc., and that is a highly dubious statement to make.
And it really is air at this point because nobody - let us repeat that because it sounded vaguely important NOBODY - outside of Facebook, Inc. really knows what Facebook, Inc. has for revenue. It is not yet a publicly traded company and everyone who says Facebook made $X dollars last quarter is guessing. Pulling numbers from thin air.
Just like with the valuation.
The problem is simply one of gravity. As a very wise person once educated us - the only time a stock can’t go lower is when it is at zero. So that $33 billion dollar valuation could be $33 day-after-tomorrow under the right set of circumstances. And remember : the government of New Jersey is going to borrow real money against this tissue-paper-promise.
Has anyone asked what will
happen if the value of this
Facebook stock grant goes
from $100 million to zero?
Personally, we believe before the government is allowed to touch one cent of the money or “leverage it” (read : borrow against it) Mark Zuckerberg should be forced to commit to a surety bond guaranteeing the $100 million dollars. That way we know the money behind it is very real and won’t evaporate.
