LinkedIn Stock Scam

Just recently, I started dabbling in penny stocks - and am doing pretty nicely from it. More so from earning a little beer money, I've enjoyed joining in because I think my first month of trading has been one of the most fascinating educational experiences of my life.

Continuing this learning experience, I was astonished to see what happened when social networking site LinkedIn went public. Their $45 initial stock price skyrocketed like you'd normally only see penny stocks do.

Many people are now claiming that this is because the underwriters of LinkedIn, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, deliberately set the initial offering price far too low.

What would be the benefit of such a move? A bunch of stockbrokers being able to buy into LinkedIn stock knowing full well that it was dramatically oversold - and doubling their money in just a day.

For LinkedIn, the jump in stock price suggests that they could have made an extra $130 million from going public if Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley had actually put them on the market at a "fair price." It's just proof that bankers remain flagrantly despicable despite having their dirty laundry aired following the 2008 financial meltdown - and even multimillion dollar companies aren't immune to their shenanigans.

When this Spanish Language Codswallop goes too far...

So I know we have a lot of Spanish-speaking people living in America. But the national language is ENGLISH. Anglais! Ingles!

It's an English speaking country. We COLONISED the bloody place.

Yet today, when I received my shiny new Bank of America credit card in the post, the letter and leaflet sent with it was in SPANISH.

Not half-in-English-half-in-Spanish. Not English translated into Spanish. Spanish.

The entire document. Plus the stickers on my card, including the instructions on how to activate it. Everything in Spanish, without a single word of English written anywhere.

I assume that some bods at the Bank of America - who I've already blogged about being the first bank in the United States to offer bank accounts to undocumented aliens - saw that I was a foreign resident and just sent the Spanish documents as a matter of course.

It might not seem like a big deal, but I'm really offended and annoyed. This is an ENGLISH speaking country and I am ENGLISH, so when my bank writes to me in a foreign language I must assume something WRONG is taking place.

I spent thousands of dollars and almost four years of my life getting LEGAL residency to the United States. I really shouldn't have bothered. I'd have got more respect and appreciation from the American institution if I'd just hauled ass across the Rio Grande like the twelve million unauthorised guests currently living here.