Facebook lost US $119B
THERE was a time when PDP-Laban was a one-man band with Nene Pimentel playing the drums, the guitar (lead, rhythm and base) and the cymbals, and singing all at the same time.
Okay, I exaggerated. Pimentel had allies but they were so few they could fit in a Volkswagen Beetle. PDP-Laban was always a party on the fringes, outshone by the LakasNUCD of Fidel Ramos, the Partido ng Masang Pilipino of Erap Estrada, the Kampi of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the LDP of the late Ramon Mitra Jr. and the NPC of Eduardo Cojuangco.
Then came Rodrigo Duterte. The then Davao City mayor was a late entry in the presidential derby but the PDP-Laban had the foresight to keep its slot for the presidency open by nominating a barangay captain as stand-in. The rest is history.
After President Duterte’s election, senators, congressmen and other officials quickly abandoned their parties and joined PDP-Laban. From a peripheral player, Nene Pimentel’s baby suddenly became the star in Philippine politics.
And now the so-called original and new members are quarreling over who should wield the party’s leadership, forcing Duterte to intervene. Nene must be laughing over the incongruity of it all.
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How much is 119 billion US dollars in Philippine pesos? Many of us do not even know how many digits are there in a billion.
One hundred nineteen billion US dollars was how much Facebook lost in one day last week when its share prices plunged after its executives announced that the company faced slower growth and lower profit margins.
To put it in perspective, the one-day loss was higher than the gross domestic product or GDP (the monetary value of all goods and services produced within a nation’s territory over a specific period of time) of many countries including Morocco, Ecuador, Slovak Republic, Sri Lanka and the Dominican Republic.
Facebook founder and Chief Operating Officer Mark Zuckerberg lost US$15 billion of his own wealth although he is still worth US$67 billion, making the 34-year-old the sixth richest man in the world.
Bigger legal troubles await him, however, as a shareholder filed suit against him in the US for allegedly failing to immediately disclose “slowing revenue growth, falling operating margins, and declines in active users.” The plaintiff, James Kacouris, obviously believes that had the company’s gloomy economic forecast been made earlier, the market wouldn’t have reacted as violently with investors dumping their shares at bargain prices.
Facebook and/ or Zuckerberg is already facing a host of legal problems mostly related to the firm’s failure to avoid becoming the platform for fake news and to protect the integrity of its users. But none of these is expected to deal a mortal blow to Facebook so don’t fret. You would still be able to post your pictures as well as your rants on your wall for years to come unless a new technology appears and renders Facebook irrelevant like it did to Friendster and Multiply.