The Week by the Numbers: October 20-26, 2013

By Matt Phifer

$17-20 – The Initial Public Offering of Shares of Twitter

Twitter announced that it would sell about 70 million shares of the company between $17 and $20 when it IPO’d.  This would raise up to $1.6 billion and value the company at $11 billion.  Twitter’s modest IPO price was chosen to avoid what happened to Facebook during its IPO in May 2012 when the company’s shares fell below their offering price.

35 – World Leaders’ Calls were Monitored by the NSA

Previously classified documents released by Edward Snowden show that the NSA was monitoring the calls of 35 world leaders.  According to memos, the NSA encouraged workers in agencies such as the State Department and the Defense Department to “hand over their rolodexes.”  The identities of the 35 leaders are not known, but the revelation comes not long after German chancellor Angela Merkel accused the United States of tapping her cell phone.

58 – Percentage of Americans Who Support Marijuana Legalization

On October 22nd, Gallup revealed that according to its polling, 58 percent of Americans support marijuana legalization.  This is the first time in the poll’s history that a majority of Americans favored marijuana legalization.  That is an eight percentage point jump from just two years ago and a drastic increase from the results of Gallup’s initial poll on the issue in 1969, when only 12 percent of those questioned favored legalization.  In the past year, Washington and Colorado became the first two states to legalize marijuana.

148,000 – Jobs Created in September

The Labor Department’s delayed September jobs report showed that the U.S. economy added 148,000 jobs in September.  The unemployment rate dropped to 7.2 percent.