Groupon recently disclosed it owes more to merchants than it has in the bank; the online discounter stays afloat only by selling new Groupons. So the Groupon's recent sales dive is particularly unwelcome.

Groupon plans to sell itself to the public at a $30 billion valuation. It's worth noting, then, that the online discounter has accumulated liabilities that greatly exceed its assets and is now running low on cash. The technical term for this is "broke ass poor."

What our fragile economy needs is a white-hot IPO of a famous but mundane consumer food brand! Well it is our lucky day, fellow unfortunate members of the US economy: mediocre donuts are here to save us—again!

Zynga, the maker of FarmVille and other Facebook games, is expected to file for its initial public offering tomorrow or shortly thereafter, seeking a valuation of $15 billion to $20 billion. It's one of the tech bubble's most rational IPOs.

Life is different near the center of the tech bubble. Facebook employees, due to earn staggering fortunes, are nevertheless sad. They'll have to wait six months for the money, you see.

It's probably wildly overvalued, so don't buy the stock. But if you're a happy Pandora customer, you can cheer the news that the magical online radio service's IPO went well today. Three billion dollars well.

Mortgage the hovel! Empty the penny jar! Leverage yourself to the hilt! Scrape together whatever meager nut you can, financially devastated Americans: Groupon is going public. You have to get in on this!

LinkedIn shares more than doubled in price in their first day of trading, valuing the annoyingly pointless social network at more than $8 billion. Now that the social networking bubble has reached the masses, it isn't just annoying, it's dangerous.

Facebook is going to postpone its IPO until 2012, to get its shit together first.

The Way We Live Now: In public. Public offerings, that is—initial ones! Are you "in" on the latest IPO, or are you twiddling your thumbs, letting inflation eat your precious nest egg, to death! Lively up yourself!

The Shaolin Temple, Buddhist kung-fu mecca, may be part of an IPO. Awesomest sellout ever?

Al Gore's Current TV, a "youth-oriented news company," is filing for a $100 million dollar public offering. Which means we all get to find out that apparently Gore's little tv station has been lying about its profitability for three solid years. Fast Company, NewTeeVee, the New York Times, and BusinessWeek all repeated claims by Current reps that the company was profitable. Turns out, not so much. "The youth-oriented news company had a net loss of $9.8 million in 2007, based on revenue of $63.8 million. It lost $7.6 million in 2006 and $14.3 million in 2005. Altogether, Current had $36.5 million in debts as of the end of last year." Why, Al? Why do you continue to lie to us? The wind chill is 30 below back where we're from, we can all see right through your deceptions! [NewTeeVee]

You know, I was all set to make gentle fun of this Business 2.0 piece on 2007: The (New) Year of the Tech IPO. It even comes with "six hot IPOs to watch," not to mention 20 fantasy-league investments as dream'd by various Valley VCs (Tim Draper! Elon Musk! Steve Case! Bill Gurley!). But then, the main article climaxes with, "There will be no irrational exuberance this time around." There it is! The first characteristic of this bubble that makes it different from the last one. Otherwise identical so far, but thank God our exuberance is now totally rational.