Paul Smalera

Is GTD any way to run a country?

There’s a sense among progressives—based on Obama’s record so far and coagulating around the compromises being made in health care reform negotiations—that the judgments Obama is making aren’t squaring with the kind of president he said he’d be. Progressive discontent is now just simmering, partially because Obama is still Obama, but he seems to be giving them every opportunity to boil over.

That’s because it looks like Obama is having a checklist presidency. Yes, his agenda is being passed, but much of it feels compromised. The president appears to be delegating far too many details to Congress in order to keep Getting Things Done.

The Getting-Things-Done President | The Big Money.

It’s amazing the emails I got when I asked for followups on my first Yelp piece, which you can find linked in this story at The Big Money or down below in my archives. Never been called a ‘little sack of shit’ before, if you can believe it! I needed to answer the question–why does Yelp engender such hatred? I think I got to the bottom of it– they are playing a delicate game of keeping their reviews relevant while protecting against spam. And they’re playing it on a scale of 20+ million monthly unique visitors. Not easy. But there might be a few things that can be done differently. I explain:

The Trilateral Commission. Bilderberg. The Freemasons. RAND Corp. The Illuminati. And, apparently, Yelp. The conspiracy-minded among us have long been convinced that the world is run by a secret cabal of wealthy elite, moving us ordinary folk around like pawns on a chess board for their own hidden purposes. Not content with running the financial system, controlling the government, or installing a new world order, they have apparently set their sights on the tantalizing target of local social media.

Yelp and Its Discontents | The Big Money.

When President Obama signed legislation in mid-June to bring tobacco under FDA regulation, few seemed outraged that the legislation had been co-written by Philip Morris USA (PM). The bill was designed, critics say, to stabilize the place of cigarettes in our society: to diminish the threat of health-related lawsuits, to prevent competitive yet possibly safer products from being introduced, and to lock in Philip Morris’ market share. It’s not just the Harvard School of Public Health leveling these charges but even Sen. Bob Bennett, Republican of Utah, a supporter of the intent of the bill who was nonetheless “convinced we would do better if we told Philip Morris to stay out of the process of writing tobacco legislation.”

Lost in the Weed | The Big Money.

It’s a sad state of affairs when the company selling the product you’re trying to regulate is writing the regulations, but tht’s exactly what’s happening in Congress right now with Philip Morris. As I write:

“It is a dream come true for Philip Morris,” Michael Siegel, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health, told me. “First, they make it look like they are a reformed company which really cares about reducing the toll of cigarettes and protecting the public’s health; and second, they protect their domination of the market and make it impossible for potentially competitive products to enter the market.” Other tobacco companies have taken to calling the bill the “Marlboro Monopoly Act of 2009.”

Please give this story a read– it’s important, and a reminder to stay vigilant about our government, no matter who is in power.

Cool, Refreshing Legislation for Philip Morris: Why it’s politically impossible to ban menthol cigarettes, even if they’re the most addictive.

“A weird quiet seems to have settled over the country. We’re in the midst of the financial crisis, yet it feels like the whole thing has somehow passed. In fact, the ionized air around us suggests we’re in the eye of this hurricane—experiencing a moment of calm before the storm whips up again.”-me

I explain why, here:

The Next Financial Explosion: Will the government have to bail out the commercial real estate market? | The Big Money.

My latest story in the Big Money is a tale of the Goofus and Gallant of sports network startups, the NFL and MLB Networks. Goofus thinks he should retain sole ownership of his network and dictate carriage terms to the cable companies. Gallant sees the value of sharing ownership of the network with cable companies, so that everyone is happy. Goofus thinks customers will drop cable for DirecTV just to get a few extra late season Thursday night games. Gallant wants to bring the games to the customer, appearing on more services and devices than any other startup network in history. Which do you think has been more successful to date?

Read about the other ways in which baseball has learned from football’s mistakes in creating its MLB Network and Extra Innings package, here:

MLB Network Hits a Home Run: How baseball learned from football’s mistake and pulled off the biggest cable launch ever. | The Big Money.

All over Bangkok are massive skyscrapers that were literally abandoned and repossessed by banks when that country went through its own financial crisis, twelve years ago. Thailand waited four years to create a “bad bank,” to help salvage its banking system. In the meantime, the zombie banks of Thailand were unable to get lending started again. The result: these construction projects, into which so much time and resources had been sunk, were total losses. The US has dozens of projects that on hold right now for very much the same reason– lack of liquidity–though we did get here in a different way. Without a bad bank to help free up capital, our cities could soon look a little more like Bangkok. But Obama, Geithner and his team stalling on creating a bad bank. And whehn they talk about creating on, it’s a public private hyrid, which will limit its power to fix the crisis. Read about what happened in Bangkok, and how to avoid its happening to us, here:

Zombie Banks Build Ghost Towers | The Big Money.

I wrote a story in The Big Money today talking about this idea of a “Lost Decade.” If you’ve noticed this meme in the news, you’ll know it comes from the idea that Japan, who had their own credit and housing crisis in the early 90s, so mismanaged their response that they suffered from a lost decade of economic stagnation.


Everywhere I turn today, people are talking about staving off an American lost decade. But, if you just look at the end result of the past ten years, didn’t we already have one? And might it not help our own bailout efforts to acknowledge this fact? I think so:


Lost Decade? We Just Had One | The Big Money.

Throwing Voodoo at Hulu | The Big Money.

My first piece for The Big Money, part of the Slate family of websites. It’s about a
tiny startup company named Boxee that scared the bejesus out of NBC,
FOX, and probably Comcast and Time Warner too.

The reason? They found a slick, legal way to put Hulu on the
television, totally upending the industry’s business and distribution
models. So big media responded as they know how– they tried to kill
Boxee. Needless to say, the attempt has been as futile as it is tone
deaf. Enjoy!

Pretty rewarding to see a piece I wrote for Condé Nast Portfolio end up on digg, where it’s quite popular. Illustrated by the talented John Grimwade. Enjoy!read more | digg story

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