Blog Posts by Henry Blodget

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Facebook's (FB) IPO should finally price this week (the target date is Friday). The offering is already more eagerly awaited than any in history, and most investors feel compelled to take a look at it.

With this in mind, here are the basic bull and bear cases.

On the bull side, Facebook's growth over the past 8 years has been nothing short of staggering. What started as a dorm-room coding project has now grown into a service used by 1/8th of the world's population. If Facebook's user growth continues, and there's no reason to think that it won't, Facebook will probably have 2-3 billion users in a few years.

The business is also off to an excellent start. Facebook only began focusing in earnest on the business side three years ago, and it has now amassed $4 billion of revenue and $1 billion of profit. The company's operating margin is extraordinary--50%--because it doesn't have any content production costs (the users do all the work). Given how

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Last fall, some U.S. economic data began to come in weak, and the stock market sold off. This prompted many economists and analysts to begin talking about the possibility of a new recession.

One analyst, however--Lakshman Achuthan of the Economic Cycle Research Institute--did not just talk about the possibility of one.

He said, definitively, that the U.S. was "tipping back into recession. And there's nothing that policy makers can do to head it off."

Well, the U.S. economy did not tip back into recession. In fact, the data started coming in better-than-expected again, and the country experienced modest growth in Q4 and Q1.

ECRI's forecasting model often antagonizes observers because it's a "black box": ECRI refuses to say what data points it includes in its leading indicators. So when the U.S. did not go into recession, Lakshman Achuthan was once again pressed for details about what went into his definitive recession call--and he was often upbraided when he refused to say.

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Pretty much anything is legal in Nevada, so it's no surprise that the state has become the first in the nation to issue a license to Google (GOOG)to operate its self-driving cars.

These cars, you will recall, have been under development for years.

And now they have passed a battery of tests set forth by Nevada, including:

• Combined driving time of 10,000 miles
• Submission of a description of the self-driving technology
• Submission of safety plan
• Submission of plan for hiring and training drivers (who are supposed to be unnecessary)
• If the cars pass these tests, the operators are given fancy red license plates. And then they're free to self-drive.

So are self-driving cars for everyone just around the corner?

Unlikely. But they don't seem nearly as far-fetched now as they did a couple of years ago.

We've long since gotten used to the idea that computers can fly our planes, take our photos, and manage our communications, and at some point, we'll probably

Apple's (AAPL) stock has pulled back sharply in recent weeks, falling ~10% from a high of $645 to $570.

This is in part due to the spectacular moonshot the stock enjoyed during the fall and winter, when it blasted from $400 to nearly $650. Apple's stock has often sold off after moves like this, and the current pullback may be just more of that behavior.

But, still, a change in trend like Apple's may indicate a fundamental concern. And these fundamental problems often start small and grow in importance over time, dragging the stock down with them.

So it's worth thinking about what investors might be worried about.

There are still a couple of catalysts that could drive Apple's stock higher this year, namely the launch of the iPhone 5 and the expected debut of the full-fledged Apple TV in the fall. But analysts have begun backing away from the expected launch date of the TV in recent weeks, which may be having some impact.

And there's the broader and more profound concern that, by 2013,

New York Magazine was kind enough to ask me to write a big story on Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook (FB) to celebrate the company's long-awaited IPO.

The story's out now, and you can read it here.

Here are some key points:

• Most people still think of Mark Zuckerberg as a sort of an idiot-savant -- a lucky kid who was in the right place at the right time and then won a $25 billion lottery (that's about how much his stake in Facebook is worth).
• Zuckerberg was certainly lucky and in the right place at the right time, but this view of him sells him massively short.
• The reason Facebook is where it is today -- a company whose product is used by 1/8th of the world's population--is not just that Zuckerberg saw a huge opportunity and went after it (lots of entrepreneurs do that). It's that Zuckerberg quickly dedicated himself to learning what he didn't know, which was how to be a great CEO.
• This was a painful process, and it wasn't easy for him. As gifted as he was as a programmer and product

Over the past five years since the Great Recession began, economists have been waging a religious war over the best way to fix our problems.

On one side are so-called "austerians" who argue that the problem is a lack of confidence caused by runaway government spending and deficits and, therefore, the best way to revitalize the economy is to radically cut government spending.

On the other side are Keynesians, who argue that the problem is lack of demand, and, therefore, the best medicine is for the government to radically increase spending to drive the economy until the private sector heals.

The most visible champion of the latter view is professor Paul Krugman of Princeton, who has just published a new book called "End This Depression Now!"

Krugman has long maintained that the government's policy response in recent years has been either weaker than, or the opposite of, what it should have been.

The original Federal stiumulus, for example, wasn't big enough, Krugman says. And the recent moves of Republican-controlled states to cut spending have made the problem worse, not better.

Why?

Because the spending cuts have led to job cuts, which have led to further spending cuts. And so on. Europe, Krugman observes, is charging down the same disastrous path, and it is now plunging into another recession.

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After five years of financial crisis followed by economic frustration, many Americans are starting to believe that the country's best years are behind it and that we're starting a long, slow decline.

Balderdash, says Barry Ritholtz, the writer of the Big Picture and a fund manager at Fusion IQ.

It's true that America's in the middle of a crappy economic decade, Ritholtz says, and the lousy growth will probably continue for the next 5 years. That's how long it takes countries to work through the aftermath of a debt-binge and financial crisis like the one we just had. And the U.S. isn't going to find a miracle cure, no matter what the politicians say.

But longer term, America's still in great shape, Ritholtz says.

Unlike Japan, which has wallowed in economic misery for more than two decades since its own real-estate bubble burst, the U.S. economy is still the most dynamic and innovative in the world.

If you want a vivid demonstration of that,

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In the weeks leading up to Apple's quarterly earnings, the stock sold off hard, dropping by almost $100 a share.

Investors were not just concerned that the stock had risen too far too fast.

They were worried about reports of weak iPhone sales at Verizon and AT&T, the two big U.S. wireless carriers.

The concern reached such a peak that yesterday, just before Apple reported its results, one Wall Street analyst capitulated, slashing his iPhone estimates for the quarter.

Then Apple's press release crossed the tape.

And, once again, the results were astounding.

Apple sold 35 million iPhones in the quarter, significantly higher than the ~30 million analysts expected.

Apple's revenue and profit also blew away expectations.