The Scandal Is When Parasites Don’t Make Enough Money

I think Spitzer and Nocera have this one right. The coverage of the Facebook IPO demonstrates the extent to which the media has internalized the interests of speculators (including those who also hold executive positions in companies issuing IPOs.) If there’s a huge “bump” in a company’s share price immediately after an IPO, this means that the firm who made a lot of money setting up the IPO completely screwed the company. A doubled share price in the week after an IPO represents an immense sum of money that the investment bank that’s being paid to act in the company’s interest has left on the table to go to speculators rather than the company that’s issuing shares. There does seem to have been some illegitimate (and possibly illegal) disclosure of information to insiders in the Facebook IPP, but it’s odd that this particular case has attracted so much attention. I’d start first with the much more common situation in which insiders with access to IPO share offerings make huge, quick profits by effectively looting capital that should be going to the company.