Rules are for suckers, and do NOT apply to Mark Zuckerberg, so, hey, get used to it.
SEC, what SEC?
It seems as though before Facebook's IPO, everybody was singing that capitalism song, free market, free trader, ride the wave, get that big government off the backs of the free market capitalists and let the money flow!!! Now that the cash-unami missed the American investor's shores, everyone who invested in FB and didn't get wet wants to know WHAT HAPPENED, GODDAMMIT! Gotta get those regs back in place to protect the 'little guy', the small investor, etc. because suddenly the small investor is ME! OH, NO, this terrible thing happened to ME!! There oughta be a LAW!! Not that we necessarily want big government, but just a few little laws, just to protect poor little me.
Well, guess what, there was a law, put in place after the Savings and Loan fiascos; not just one, in fact there were several, and your bought-and-paid-for, probably (but not necessarily) Republican Congressperson gutted it, blocked it, overrode it, restricted it, or outright killed it, courtesy of the lobbying dollars of the banking industry. They have lots of money. See how they get it? And see what they use it for? It's sooo easy.
Now yet AGAIN we see what happens when 'free market capitalism' money flows in only one direction, and AGAIN it happened because information is withheld from the majority of potential investors. That's insider information, and inherently unfair. All of the important information about the company is supposed to be in the written prospectus, but some very pertinent information was dispersed VERBALLY among bankers and a very few insiders. Definition of insider trading, right? Plus, the rest of the information was in the prospectus, but so vaguely written, it was easily missed by everyone but the most alert people, or the ones who already knew about the facts; namely that FB had doubts about their own financial prospects.
But, really, be straight, who reads prospectuses, right? Especially in all of the excitement? Everyone just wanted to jump on in and OWN some of FB, because so many of the were ON FB, and suddenly stuff started coming out, and some, er, unpleasantness is discovered, so following the naughty trail should be fairly easy. Not that anything actually, technically, unless-you-are-a-total-Debbie-Downer-fusspot illegal was done, I'm sure.
This has been going on since deregulation of the banking system in the 80s, but it's not usually been so obvious and in-your-face. (I'll bet the bankers in the FB's Big Three are ready to kick someone's a** for being so amateurish about the whole thing. So very distasteful and low-rent, you know.)
The big difference this time is that EVERYONE wanted a piece of Facebook, and when they got it, or rather, were finally permitted to purchase it, (it looked more like opening the doors at Walmart on Black Friday than anything else), it was the dotcom bubble all over again. Instead of owning, or even wanting to own, a piece of something real, it started to dissolve in their hands. I guess these investors counted on the ephemeral hopes that worldwide popularity is the equivalent of substance.
That is not necessarily the case, which anybody who's heard Bruce Springsteen's Glory Days and thought 'Yeah, that was me' can relate to.
I hear they didn't even get a piece of paper.