Other Stuff

Loni Anderson, RIP: Actor Loni Anderson dies at 79 | AP News

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Wait, you left HOW much money on the table? Software company Figma went public on Thursday, selling about 37 million shares at $33 a share. I believe the first trade when it opened for actual public trading was $93.50 and it ended the day around $120/share. In after-hours trading that day, it got over $148 but has since settled back down a bit and is trading around $115 in Monday pre-market trading as I write this. Pick any number in the range that it traded after opening, but just for ease of math why don't we say an average trading price of $113 even though that's too low. That means that of the roughly 12.5 million shares sold by the company for its own fund-raising and 24.5 million shares sold by existing shareholders wanting to cash out, they received, in the aggregate, $80 x 37,000,000, or just under $3 billion less than they would have if they hadn't sold until the actual market demand was determined. To be clear, IPOs are always intentionally priced a little low to make sure the shares in the offering get sold because an offering that isn't fully subscribed is a disaster in terms of a statement of public confidence in the company. But when you see a mispricing as bad as this one, you have to think that investment bankers made a pretty big mistake and I bet the company and selling shareholders are pissed.

From the press release: "Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Allen & Company LLC, and J.P. Morgan are acting as joint lead book-running managers for the offering. BofA Securities, Wells Fargo Securities, and RBC Capital Markets are acting as book-running managers for the offering. William Blair and Wolfe | Nomura Alliance are acting as co-managers for the offering."

Figma Announces Pricing of Initial Public Offering | Figma Blog

Figma's IPO was a huge hit. Here are the companies betting markets think are next in line to debut.

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We talked with Jared Polis and CO Budget Director Mark Ferrandino about the $1 billion budget hole nominally caused by a reduction of tax revenue to the the BBB but as the Rocky Mountain Voice folks properly note (and as I've said before but it's worth reiterating), this is absolutely positively the fault of Democrats' addition to socialized medicine specifically and big government generally: They built the budget bomb: Now Colorado Democrats say President Trump lit the fuse - Rocky Mountain Voice

One more: Daniel: Colorado’s Budget Crisis Wasn’t an Accident — It Was a Choice - Rocky Mountain Voice

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Last week's GDP report was MUCH weaker than the 3% headline number. More than all of the gain in GDP was caused by a massive decline in imports, which is actually bad news. The rest of the economy was rather weak: The Weirdest GDP Report Ever - WSJ

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Lots of folks (you know who they are) will cheer this. But it's definitely a double-edged sword. And will probably have some real negative impacts on the economy until the administration figures out a way to get a lot of legal immigrant workers into the country to fill these jobs. Some folks push back on the idea of "jobs Americans" won't do and even if you are among them you must at least admit that there are "jobs Americans won't do unless they get paid a LOT more than the immigrants will work for." And, again, some people will cheer for that but you should ask yourself two things: One, why should government interfere with voluntary contracts, and two, will you be able to afford to buy the various things that are currently produced with significant contributions from immigrant (including illegal immigrant) labor if we lose much of that workforce. Food, in particular, will get more expensive, but other things as well like housing, hotel stays, meals at restaurants, and more. Also, the "just let Americans do everything" crowd seems to forget that we have a fairly low unemployment rate, so where will all those workers come from?

I fully support doing as much as possible to end illegal immigration. Kicking out all current illegals, including those who have been here a long time and working and not committing crime, is a much harder question. But of course also having a policy that allows them to stay creates an incentive for others to come and try to get that "amnesty" so it's not an easy thing to deal with.

If we really are having net negative migration, I do hope that the vast majority of those leaving are illegal (and I suspect that's the case) but, again, the economy will suffer if we don't replace the workers somehow, and consumers will suffer if we try to replace them all with American workers at higher wages.