You remember Goldman Sachs, right? The ones who received billions in U.S. taxpayer bailout money and promptly issued billions of dollars in bonuses to employees? The ones who admitting to bamboozling investors with worthless subprime mortgage funds in 2007 and ended up paying record fines of $550 million -- a fraction of the profits accrued? The ones in $2,000 Armani suits who make the Mafia look like Mouseketeers?
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Those guys. They're the ones Facebook jumped in bed with -- so if Goldman Sachs says Facebook's worth $50 billion, how can we mere mortals dispute that?
Also sleeping with Facebook: Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian investment firm that is largely responsible for foisting Zynga (aka Farmville et al.) upon the world. The company dropped another $50 million into Facebook's pockets, bringing its total investment in the social network to around half a billion dollars.
DST is allegedly controlled by a Russian oligarch and Putin pal named Alisher Usmanov, who is described thusly by Gawker: