The Irony in the SEC

Today the Netflix CEO posted that the SEC is filing suit against Netflix for giving the netflix facebook followers “material” investor information about the company and stock, because they used facebook to publish the news instead of a 8-K filing or press release.

The SEC does not recognize social network postings as public knowledge, and by association they probably don't yet recognize blog posts as public knowledge. This is stupid.


Original Post by Reed Hastings

SEC staff questions a Facebook post. Fascinating social media story.

We use blogging and social media, including Facebook, to communicate effectively with the public and our members. 

In June we posted on our blog that our members were enjoying “nearly a billion hours per month” of Netflix, and people wrote about this. We did not also issue a press release or 8-K filing about this.

In early July, I publicly posted on Facebook to the over 200,000 of you who subscribe to me that our members had enjoyed over 1 billion hours in June, highlighting how strong our content was. There was press coverage as there are many reporters and bloggers among you, my public followers. Some of you re-posted my post. Again, we did not also issue a press release or file an 8-K about this. 

SEC staff informed us yesterday that they are recommending that the SEC bring a civil action against us for my July 1 billion hour public post, asserting we violated “Reg FD”. This rule is designed to ensure that individual investors have equal access to information as large institutional investors, by prohibiting selective disclosure of material information.  

The SEC staff believes that I gave you all “material” investor information in my post and that we needed to instead release the June viewing fact “publicly” with an 8-K filing or press release.  

I want to note a few things. 

First, we think posting to over 200,000 people is very public, especially because many of my subscribers are reporters and bloggers.  

Second, while we think my public Facebook post is public, we don’t currently use 

Facebook and other social media to get material information to investors; we usually get that information out in our extensive investor letters, press releases and SEC filings. We think the fact of 1 billion hours of viewing in June was not “material” to investors, and we had blogged a few weeks before that we were serving nearly 1 billion hours per month.  

Finally, while our stock rose the day of my public post, the increase started well before my mid-morning post was out, likely driven by the positive Citigroup research report the evening before.  

We remain optimistic this can be cleared up quickly through the SEC’s review process.  

-Reed

A New Approach...

This post is for Washington viewers.

Population Control

A friend on facebook created a post including the words population control and immediately my brain was exploding with thoughts about what it means, why it exists, and how mortal man gets to decide the fate of another...

the post was "No matter what anyone tells you, being an only child was the best thing ever."

.............................."and it helps with population control."

what it means, w

• Most Americans generally think that population control is a good thing.
• Most people think they should be using population control on american people is an important thing. 
• They either knowingly or unknowingly are aware or think America's demise is possible.  
• Communities and People seem to be governing themselves on a sliding scale between greed socialism. Socialism completely takes the life out of the people, and enslaves them all. Literally zero can be accomplished. Not literally literally, because they're still educating and surviving, but their innovation is almost nothing. As we see from north  
• Every Country is as bad as its worst good person, and is as best as its best bad-guy. 
• The good person - is the person who's job is to be a civil servant. a warrior for the future of our people. Their job it to take care of everybody possible, and make sure we evolve and grow. 
• the worst of the good person, is the politician who's more interesting in serving capitalists than politics. he's gone undercover in the world of good, to purely take advantage of the situation and create bad. They're genuinely taking from the poor and giving to the rich. it doesn't get much worse that this. 
• the bad-guy - the bad-guy is the capitalist. Capitalism is the engine behind greed. At greed's worst, you have people willing to gain money from the fall of others. Not just willing, but eagerly and tirelessly trying to gain at the downfall of others to the point of real pain and starvation. Basically, slavery... Many business owners are happy living a luxurious lifestyle while their employees are dying. 
• The best of the Bad-Guys, is the capitalist truly doing a good service for humanity while profiting. If facebook was never created, the same amount of money in american industry wouldn't have existed. Same with Twitter. Media companies were previously holding content hostage. IN ORDER TO BE KNOWLEDGED ABOUT CURRENT HAPPENINGS, YOU MUST PAY OUR GATEKEEPER.... fuck that. We don't need to pay some fat murdoch to get news about a house that burned down across the street, whether or not that house is now down the street or 3000 miles away, we're smart enough to pass that information in milliseconds to the recipient and thats because the best of the bad. The innovative profiteers. 
• It would have been invested in oil companies, or solar, or banks, or insurance, or telco... But innovations in 1st world countries are truly pushing humanity as a whole towards a better world. A better world with less disease, and more freedom. Genuinely it comes down to freedom of thought. most people in 3rd world countries don't have a similar thought to an american, and similarly we've never had the same thoughts they have because we live SUCH entirely different lives. If you gave everyone a choice on every birthday to choose where they lived, and which life they lived, do you think most people would choose to live in america or a 3rd world country? I think 80% would choose America, and 20% wouldn't. I figure the top quadrant of a bell curve would choose to battle life and try to create change. the others wouldn't. I'm one of the people that would live in america..
• Wow, that was a huge tangent. I meant to say our current innovation, is taking money from allover the world and keeping it here in america. Everytime a new positive company is created in america, we add another year onto our existence. kinda like in real life how every workout adds a minutes to your life, new companies add life to American/Human Growth. And these companies are genuinely good for humanity.
•  This isn't Fanboy-ish. Each company must be looked at like an income statement, as a moment in time. You look at today, if facebook existed or didn't, would the world be better or worse? I think most people would choose a world with facebook. I think the same about Apple, and Google, and Amazon, Microsoft, HP, Dell, ATT, FOX, Comcast, Nokia, Kodak. All these fucking companies created good shit at one point in their existance, and people would have chosen they existed. But after time they peak in morallity and turn towards evil... This is the same about the worst of the good-people. They're also good for a little while and create good shit unti they peak the morality continuum and fall towards evil. 

European Youth Unemployment Rates

Every time I flip through a financial TV-show, the topic of greece and the european economy come up. All Greek, Spanish, and European government officials are obviously as competent as our government officials. 

I learned a fantastic amount of information about the European debt crisis on this NPR podcast episode of "this american life"

After listening to that, you'll get a real sinking feeling by looking at this chart. Immediately after our real estate crisis in 2008, the investment banks were in dire need of investments, so countries in europe had government bonds that were quickly swept up. So quickly that they offered more. When a government sells a bond, its the exact same as taking a loan from someone. Its pure debt. Since then you can see what's been happening! Kids aren't working. Their living with their parents, or living in debt.  

Good For People, Bad for Greed

During the great depression in the 1930's, a law was created to separate regular banks and investment banks. The law was called Glass/Steagall Act.

Regular Bank exists for the lower and middle class to have savings accounts and checking accounts and to create pure safety of societal economics.

Investment Banks exist for pure speculation and gambling on a massive large scale. You can go to vegas and bet on a football game. You can go to investment banks and bet on a company. Its the exact same.

In the 1930's, banks were taking people's savings, and investing in companies and real estate with pure greed in mind. It created a Bubble, where investments were being taken because an underlying assumption that they were safe. In reality they weren't and we got the great depression. So Glass-Steagall Act forced investment banks to be separate from regular banks.

In 1999 Glass-Steagall act was removed because of Greed. Why do Cars have brakes? You might say "to stop" but really its to slow down. With Capitalism we get innovation which is good for society, but we also have greed, which is very dangerous. Brakes are there to allow cars to slow down, and keep us in a

If you're too big to fail, you're too fucking big. You're fat and bloated like a 1200-pound American gorging himself on hamburgers and pizza. You don't need plastic surgery(legislation) you need education.