Facebook's IPO Losses Could Have Bailed Out Bankia and Bought a Whole Lot of Gold

We all have seen Facebook FB miraculously fall from grace and go from media darling to media devil in about as much time as it takes for high-frequency traders to make millions of trades, i.e. about a second. So, with all of the wealth (well, paper wealth for some) that has been obliterated with Facebook's slide, it is interesting to see what Facebook could have bought with all of that lost cash.

Facebook is down about 25% from its issue price, meaning that approximately $26 billion of wealth has been wiped out. So, the question is, what could this buy you? Well, one thing all Americans have been struggling with is high gas prices, and $26 billion could buy a whole lot of gas. At current prices (national average), you could buy about 7 billion gallons of gas, which is a heck of a lot of gas. You could also buy financial media's other favorite stock, Apple AAPL and in fact buy more than 45 million shares of Apple, giving you about a 5% stake. Further, you could potentially buy a whole lot of gold. At current prices, one could buy about 16.7 million ounces of gold at $1554.70 per ounce. The point is, that amount of money can buy a lot of little things.

Realistically, that sum of money would be used for more beneficial purposes. First of all, the $26 billion is about the amount of money that Spain is injecting into Bankia to keep it solvent, so Facebook could have just paid for that. The losses from the IPO could have also bought more than 4 RIM's RIMM at current market prices. This amount of money could have also bought Zynga ZNGA, Pandora P, Zillow Z, Splunk SPLK, Yelp YELP, Nokia NOK, and Instagram and still have over $2 billion left over to play with.

And for those with a more luxurious tooth, one could really stimulate the global economy. $26 billion could buy over 100,000 Ferarri 458 Spiders or 140,000 Rolls Royce Phantoms. Or, for those with really sweet thumbs, you could buy Yuri Milner's $88 million New York City Appartment 295.45 times over. The point is, this is a lot of money.