Share the View: What Is Snapchat Really Worth?

Share The View

THE LATEST OPINIONS FROM BLOOMBERG VIEW

FEBRUARY 19, 2015 bloombergview.com

SOCIAL MEDIA Justin Fox: "What is Snapchat worth? Well, if the purveyor of disappearing photos and videos succeeds in attracting a new funding round of $500 million, and gets those new investors to settle for 2.6 percent of the company, it will be worth $19 billion." Read more... FEDERAL RESERVE Mohamed A. El-Erian: "If you needed further evidence of how tricky central-bank policy making has become, just take a look at the minutes of last month's Federal Reserve meeting." Read more... ENERGY Leonid Bershidsky: "Bank analysts are predicting the oil rally of recent weeks isn't going to last. It's important, though, to reflect on why the rally happened in the first place." Read more... RETIREMENT Christopher Flavelle: "When it comes to retirement planning, there are two kinds of people: low-income Americans, who worry about saving enough money, and everybody else." Read more... POLITICS Jonathan Bernstein: Jeb Bush gave a foreign-policy address yesterday in which he stated, "I am my own man." "He also rolled out a list of foreign-policy advisers, who turn out to be mostly from the two Bush administrations. ... So which is it?" Read more... HEALTH Caroline Freund: "Some parents of children with attention deficit disorder got a welcome surprise last month. If they went to refill a prescription of Intuniv, a popular ADD treatment, they discovered that its monthly cost had dropped by 80 percent. The reason: The patent on the drug had expired at the end of 2014, and the generic was available." Read more... HEALTH-CARE REFORM Megan McArdle: "Apparently, there is a movement afoot to get the Barack Obama administration to line up the Affordable Care Act's open-enrollment period with tax season. ... It's actually a lot more complicated than that." Read more... TERRORISM Stephen L. Carter: It's difficult to imagine this week's White House summit on violent extremism will move things along. "We have been here before -- and recently." Read more... SPORTS Kavitha A. Davidson: "The 2015 NBA All-Star Game has come and gone, and it was by most accounts a great success for both the league and the host city." Read more... ENTERTAINMENT Zara Kessler: "Modern Family" is going digital. "Is this a gimmick? Of course. ... It's precisely the combination of gimmicky heavy-handedness and rehashed creativity that stands to make next week's episode potentially powerful." Read more...