The feeble showing of Facebook’s stock in the weeks since its $16bn initial public offering has left people casting about for explanations. Maybe Morgan Stanley, which organised the IPO, got complacent. Maybe Facebook neglected to adapt its platform fully to the world of mobile devices. Maybe, if we are to believe the Los Angeles Times, the company, for all its 900m users, is “losing its cool”. Those explanations are wrong. There may be a simpler explanation: political risk.