Thiel, according to a 2006 Bloomberg profile, has invested his entire liquid net worth in Clarium. That's not quite technically true: Thiel has actually invested his money in a separate account managed by Clarium according to the same strategy his firm uses for outside investors. (Clarium has two other such separately managed accounts, but they are small in value.)

These matters are disclosed to the investors Clarium courts. One forwarded a copy of Clarium's marketing materials to Valleywag. Figuring out Thiel's holdings is a simple matter of subtraction.

Clarium LP, the name of Clarium's main fund, had $1.7 billion in assets under management as of March. The firm's "strategy assets" — total assets, including separately managed accounts — add up to $2.1 billion. So the ceiling on Thiel's liquid net worth is $400 million. (That's not counting his 5 percent stake in Facebook, recently valued at around $100 million.) After losing roughly $5 billion in assets from bad trading and client withdrawals in the second half of 2008, Clarium has continued to perform poorly, entirely missing the recent market rally.

So who cares if he's a hundred-millionaire instead of a billionaire? Thiel does, for one. He did not make nearly as much from the $1.5 billion sale of PayPal as he believes he deserves, according to people familiar with his thinking — the source of a long-simmering feud with top Valley venture-capital firm Sequoia Capital, one of PayPal's backers.

And a perception of outsized wealth is the source of his newfound social standing in Manhattan, where he recently relocated. It's the reason why he gets impromptu dinner invitations from the likes of New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg. It's the reason why people pay the slightest attention to his crackpot social theories. Take away that crucial tenth digit on his net worth, and he's just another indistinguishable member of the averagely ultrarich.

Last summer, the company settled a dispute with a rival social network, ConnectU, that dates back to the founding of Facebook in CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm room. ConnectU's lawyers — whom the site's founders have since fired — revealed that the case was settled for $65 million in a newsletter bragging about their firm's accomplishments. And now the Associated Press has obtained a court filing which shows the exact breakdown of cash and stock Facebook used to settle the case: $20 million in cash, and 1,253,326 shares of Facebook stock.

That's no mere detail. ConnectU's ex-lawyers at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges are pursuing legal action against ConnectU's founders — Divya Narendra and Olympic-rower twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss — to get them to pay $13 million. In other words, a 20 percent cut of the supposed $65 million settlement. But is the settlement really worth $65 million?

In October 2007, Microsoft paid $35.90 a share for $240 million in Facebook preferred stock, which only garnered it a 1.6 percent stake in the company. Preferred stock, the kind usually purchased by venture capitalists, have more rights and protections than common stock, which is the type owned by founders and issued to employees. And when a company is private, it's typical for preferred shares to have a higher value than common shares.

ConnectU's settlement was issued in common shares. And an appraisal Facebook conducted to value the shares it issued to employees valued the company at $3.7 billion, or $8.88 a share — making the stock part of ConnectU's payment only worth $11 million, and the total $31 million.

The uncertain value of Facebook's stock must be why ConnectU's ex-lawyers are in a dispute. If it had been paid in cash, why would they be arguing over how much the lawyers were owed? Instead of having $65 million, the Winklevosses and Narendra find themselves with $20 million in cash, a $13 million legal bill-and 1.25 million shares of Facebook that aren't worth nearly as much as they thought.

How little? An informal market for Facebook stock exists, though it's not publicly traded. Vulture investors are offering to buy shares for as little as $2.50 apiece. At that price, the company as a whole is worth $1.3 billion. That's less than Yahoo reportedly bid for the company in 2006.

And that's where Facebook could really get into trouble.

We hear that Facebook's salesforce had a series of panicked meetings last week as its salespeople tried to drum up more business. Google is actively working to steal advertisers away from the company, which has struggled to come up with new marketing products based on its users' relationships. (It does not help matters that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who worked in the Clinton Administration before joining Google to run customer service, has no real sales experience, as much as she likes to claim otherwise.) Meanwhile, Facebook continues to spend money as it attracts new users; every million users Facebook adds requires approximately $1 million in new servers.

So Facebook will probably need to raise money soon, and it will have to give up a far larger percentage of the company this time-a scenario its executives have dreaded, but which they have few ways to avoid. It will likely have to make whole Microsoft and other investors who bought in at a $15 billion valuation by issuing them new shares. That will further dilute the stake owned by employees, which will hurt morale and possibly lead to defections. If it loses key salespeople and engineers, Facebook will lose further momentum. The prospect of a death spiral is very real.

Right now, Zuckerberg's problem is averting disaster. After that, he can worry about how to get Facebook's value back up to $15 billion.

These should be heady times for Thiel, whose Clarium hedge fund sparked glowing press coverage (and more than a little envy). His strategy was different from most of the private pools of cash run out of places like Greenwich: Using relatively little debt, he sought to profit in times when governments meddle with markets. That should be now, right? Instead, he has been as hard hit by the credit crisis as most other hedge funds. He is down a mere 4.5 percent for the year — but that includes his phenomenal 58 percent rise from $4 billion in January 2008 to $7 billion six months later.

From July to December, Clarium's assets cratered. According to performance data obtained by Valleywag, Clarium's main fund returned negative 39 percent. Put simply, an investor who put in the fund's minimum of $1 million would have ended six months later with $600,00.

By the numbers, most did not wait around that long. Thiel's fund ended the year with only $2 billion under management, which suggests that investors took out another $2 billion, in addition to Clarium's $3 billion in investment losses. (Click to see the full document.)

No surprise there: Risk-averse investors have been pulling out of hedge funds everywhere. Thiel was right about the mortgage bubble, and right about the rising role of governments in markets. But was he right about how to make money off these developments? So far, the answer's no. And to investors, that's the only kind of vision that matters.

Spotted at Collateral Auction Systems, an outfit in the Bay Area suburb of Fremont, Calif. which sells repossessed cars: A Mercedes biturbo V12 SL600, a car which sells new for $120,000.

On the license-plate frame: the logo of Cisco, a San Jose-based networking-equipment giant which makes everything from cable set-top boxes to telecom switches to home Wi-Fi routers.

There's a story behind this photo of someone who lived high off of Cisco's rich stock options — an engineer? an executive? a salesman? And just as suddenly, the spigot of cash shut off. In six months, the stock has fallen by more than 40 percent. Cisco stealthily laid off employees even as its cheerleading CEO John Chambers said the company wouldn't cut staff. We don't have the details on how this six-figure driving machines landed in a repo lot — but the picture tells a story all the same.

“The economy is tanking and people are arguing about whether they should go to Demo or TechCrunch,” Abrams told the Times. “Few companies sound like they are breaking new ground. It’s like, ‘Here is Twitter for dogs.’ And people still think they are going to get rich by being a blogger.” Hm. Twitter for dogs does sound pretty lame. But then, so did "Friendster for college students."

The loss comes after a stunning track record of the firm's biggest monthly loss, beating an 11 percent drop in March 2004. Strangely, this topic went uncovered in TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington's interview of Thiel on Monday. Arrington let Thiel repeat, unchallenged, his assertion that there is no bubble in technology. To which we would add: Perhaps so. But there may be a bubble in a certain hedge fund. (Photo by VentureBeat)

1. The latest winning Powerball jackpot: $275 million
2. The salaries of the six cheapest Major League Baseball teams: $242.9 million
3. Microsoft's investment in Facebook: $240 million
4. The Houston Texans football team: $700 million
5. Tom Perkins's 289.1' sailing yacht Maltese Falcon: up to $300 million
6. Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich's forthcoming 482.6' motor yacht, the Eclipse: $300 million
7. David Beckham's contract with the Los Angeles Galaxy: $250 million
8. IM startup Meebo's desired valuation: $250 million
9. Alex Rodriguez's contract with the New York Yankees: $275 million
10. A brand new Airbus A380: $319 million
11. The most expensive building ever sold — 666 Fifth Avenue, New York City: $1.8 billion
12. The divorce settlement Heather Mills wanted from Paul McCartney: $250 million (Photo by AP/Mark Lennihan)

As with most mergers, there may be reductions in headcount. We expect these to take place in the U.S. and possibly in other regions as well. We know that DoubleClick is built on the strength of its people. For this reason we'll strive to minimize the impact of this process on all of our clients and employees.

• Bill Gates is out $6 billion since the beginning of the year and $3 billion since Microsoft bid on Yahoo
• Steve Ballmer's net worth is down $3 billion since 2007
• Apple CEO Steve Jobs has lost $400 million in six weeks.
• Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are both down $5 billion so far this year.
• Google CEO Eric Schmidt lost $2 billion this year.

Google has taken over san jose airport as they all go to disneyland for their company trip. Everyone is in love with them. Best moment...all flights are currently delayed so naturally the quick thinking googlera are buzzing gate agents trying to jump on other flights. Thankfully the airlines are not allowing googlera to change their group assigned tickets. I LOVE watching googlers argue in earnest only to be denied by the polite agent who lets escape a wry smile after each denial, much to the pleasure of nearby nongooglers. What ... Sergey's plane is too busy running NASA experiments to help out?

The raids, in Amsterdam and Middlesbrough, followed a two-year investigation into a members-only Web site, www.OiNK.cd, which allowed users to upload and download albums before their release.

An estimated 180,000 members of the site paid "donations" via debit or credit cards, ensuring that they could continue to access the site and its catalogue of music and other media.

The site provided access to more than 60 albums before their release this year, according to industry experts.

Wow, 180,000 members on lists probably now in the hands of the authorities during the international music industry's most litigious season in recent memory. Whoops! (Actually many of the news stories on OiNK's shutdown are getting the facts wrong—users didn't have to pay dues to remain an OiNK user; they just had to upload a shit-ton of music, so as to keep their upload-to-download ratio high enough.) Here's hoping that whatever user logs the cops have don't include any of the entitled boys and girls on this Digg thread:

This has to be a fucking joke.
I need my OiNK.

There, there...we all survived Audiogalaxy leaving us, and we'll all survive this. Promise.

Raids Target Music Piracy Site [Reuters]