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Facebook's (FB) IPO should finally price this week (the target date is Friday). The offering is already more eagerly awaited than any in history, and most investors feel compelled to take a look at it.

With this in mind, here are the basic bull and bear cases.

On the bull side, Facebook's growth over the past 8 years has been nothing short of staggering. What started as a dorm-room coding project has now grown into a service used by 1/8th of the world's population. If Facebook's user growth continues, and there's no reason to think that it won't, Facebook will probably have 2-3 billion users in a few years.

The business is also off to an excellent start. Facebook only began focusing in earnest on the business side three years ago, and it has now amassed $4 billion of revenue and $1 billion of profit. The company's operating margin is extraordinary--50%--because it doesn't have any content production costs (the users do all the work). Given how

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President Barack Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney may be tied in general election matchup polls, but a new survey shows Obama's popularity is growing among global investors.

According to a new poll of more than 1,000 Bloomberg customers, Obama is viewed in a positive light by 56 percent of global investors compared to only 40 percent who favor Romney. In the U.S. however, where the votes actually count, investors favor Romney over Obama and believe the former Massachusetts governor would be better for the global economy.

When asked who would better handle the global economy, global investors favor Obama 49 percent versus 38 percent for Romney. This sentiment is not surprising if you look across the pond to recent elections in France and Greece, where there is growing voter backlash against austerity measures — programs Republicans often promote here in the U.S. — that have led to slow growth in Europe. (See: Looking Beyond Europe's "Quasi-Disaster," Stocks Snap Losing Streak)

Also on the uptick are poll respondents' perceptions that Obama would be good for domestic markets, which is right in line with market performance. The S&P and Dow are up nearly 40 percent since the president took office at the beginning of 2009. Forty-eight percent of global investors believe an Obama re-election would be a "good thing" for U.S. markets, compared to 36 percent who believe he would bad for markets. At the beginning of the year 44 percent of global investors believed a second term for Obama would be a positive, up from 38 percent at the end of 2011.