Last month, Japan said that even if the United Nations were to agree to ban international trade in endangered Atlantic bluefin tuna, it would ignore the agreement. "It's a pity," Japanese negotiator Masanori Miyahira said, "but it's a matter of principle."

Miyahira doesn't have to worry. The U.N. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (which goes by the much less cumbersome "Cites") on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to reject the ban. Only the United States, Norway, and Kenya strongly supported the measure. Other nations, including those in the European Union, favored various softer measures.

Japan is by far the biggest customer for the species, which is often used for sushi: The country consumes about 80 percent of the annual catch.

Japan argues that Cites, despite its quite specific name and its crystal-clear mission, is the wrong one to regulate bluefin protection. The proper regulator, it says, is the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas. Groups seeking restrictions on fishing bluefin say that body favors industrial fishing operations. They have nicknamed it "The International Conspiracy To Catch all Tuna."

Stocks of bluefin have fallen by 75 percent due to overfishing.

The Associated Press bluntly stated in its report on the vote that "economic interest at this meeting appeared to be trumping conservation."

The Audit Board of Circulations made a rule change this week that will make it easier for electronic editions of magazines designed for tablets to be counted within the overall circulations guaranteed to advertisers.

The AP explains some of the details of the rule change:

The new rules allow publishers to count paid digital subscriptions as part of a magazine's overall circulation as long as all the same editorial and advertising material is included.

That means publishers can custom design their articles and photo spreads for Apple Inc.'s iPad, which goes on sale April 3. Without the rule change, they could only count digital editions that appear exactly the way they do in print.

Magazines need the change because they charge for ads based on the size of their so-called rate base, the circulation they guarantee to advertisers.

By comparison, newspapers have had looser restrictions. Because they don't guarantee a rate base, they can count people who pay for access to their Web sites regardless of what ads run there

We won't know until we see the tablets in use whether ads will work in the electronic editions. But this rule change at least allows the publishers to get the short-term benefit of the increased circulation.

Dell (DELL) generated tremendous buzz late last year in pulling off a Twitter first: selling $6.5 million-worth of PCs, software, and accessories via its corporate Twitter feed. Could other companies "pull off a Dell," the experts wondered, using the microblogging platform to keep customers informed and to get them to buy stuff?

Months later and there are still no clear answers. Turning Twitter into a direct-sales channel is a no-brainer, maybe, for Dell's direct-sales business model. But what about big brands that rely on retailers to sell the product? Could they, too, transact with their Twitter followers without aggravating their business partners?

Sony's European division wanted to find out. Recently, Sony Europe's PR team went to the Sony Style group with a sales offer that it could share with its 1,600 Twitter followers: an offer to custom-build your own Sony Vaio laptop and get 10 percent knocked off from the final sale price. "It was incredibly successful," says Nick Sharples, director of corporate communications for Sony Europe.

How successful?

Sony disclosed Twitter Vaio sales of over £1 million during the limited-offer period. But it's not the impact on the bottom line that excited Sony. It learned a bit more about how its customers would prefer to interact with the company via its social media channels like Twitter and Facebook, channels Sony fans traditionally go to for advice and tips, not for the hard sell.

As Sharples explains, Sony customers are, by their nature, social-media savvy, but nobody within the organization knew for sure just how they might respond to the occasional sales offer on a channel that they chose to follow or friend. Would they be offended, for instance, or would they appreciate a chance to buy a custom-designed Vaio not available in shops? They were hardly offended, Sharples says.

Sony recognizes it's taking a more conservative approach then Dell, and it probably always will.

Dell's use of Twitter, Sony observes, is somewhat unique in that it can afford to use its social-media channels to serve the primary functions of customer service and outreach plus direct sales. If it didn't at least try a Twitter sales strategy you could imagine the heated questions the executive team would face at the next shareholders meeting. As Sharples says, "people would expect Dell to use these channels as another direct way into selling product to its customers, and people wouldn't be offended by that."

Sony has to be a bit more careful than Dell not to blur the sales-outreach line, however. Sharples says:

For us, there's a balance to be established. Our whole perspective on social media is we're in this for the longterm. We want to use it to engage with our customers. That's very different, we realize, from how some companies perceive social media, as an add-on maybe for a new product launch or marketing campaign, and then leave it for dead when [the campaign or product launch] is over.

He continues that the leave-for-dead philosophy "tends to be a marketing approach. Marketing tends to be campaign-driven whereas we [in corporate communications] are relationship driven. We want to establish a dialogue through social media, use it to better understand the consumer. We get a lot of valuable feedback through social media."

Coming back to the Vaio offer, what, then, did Sony Europe learn from its customers? They are happy to endure sales offers on Twitter and Facebook as long as it's for a specialized product, something unique enough that will get the community buzzing. From the way Sharples sees it, the conversation that results is as valuable as the sale.

That leaves just one question: Will companies now be trying to "pull off a Sony" with their social-media strategies?

 

Film studios finally realize they don’t need those pesky video-rental places. Being a middleman is a precarious profession. Inevitably, technological change erodes your business model, connecting your two customers and rendering your services moot. Case in point: Movie studios have launched an ad campaign to tell viewers to watch their films on-demand, skirting the need for Netflix (NFLX), RedBox, and Blockbuster (BBI). This strategy still relies on the cable companies, of course, but it’s a far more profitable one for the studios. They make 65 cents off of every on-demand dollar, compared with 25 cents for Netflix, according to the New York Times. (New York Times)

This new on-demand strategy won't exactly help Blockbuster avoid bankruptcy. TBM's own Kevin Kelleher weighs in on Blockbuster's bankruptcy warning at NewTeeVee. Kelleher is bearish, writing that even if Blockbuster restructures, it still has the same fundamental business-model issues it had before it declared bankruptcy. Question: What happens to outstanding late fees if the company you owe them to goes bankrupt? (NewTeeVee)

Google TV latest device that may or may not change anything. The New York Times is reporting that Google (GOOG) is coming to the living room with the express purpose of bringing TV on the Internet back to the TV. It’s a shot across the bow to a handful of companies—Apple (AAPL), TiVo (TIVO), Boxee, Roku, all the cable companies, etc.—and it comes at a time when everyone is beginning to get serious about the set-top box. Hulucination will have its own take on this later in the day, especially as it relates to our patron site, Hulu. Check back in later. (New York Times)

Coming up on the blog: How Google TV is actually the final step in a tech evolution started long ago with WebTV! Maybe a celebratory March Madness post! It’s Thursday, March 18, 2010, and this Stream Room apologizes for arriving late. You’re reading Hulucination. We like that.

Michael Cader's Publisher's Marketplace stunned the book world this morning with the announcement that Steve Riggio would be ceding the CEO's title to William Lynch, the 39-year-old head of BN.com.

It's hard not to see the news as a direct response to the amount of pressure the company is getting from Ron Burkle. Though installing Lynch as CEO hardly addresses the company's problems.

Motoko Rich added some biographical detail on Lynch a little later:

Mr. Lynch, 39, joined Barnes & Noble in February 2009 without any experience in the book business. He had most recently been executive vice president of marketing at HSN.com, and had held a string of jobs in e-commerce or technology companies.

At Barnes & Noble, Mr. Lynch oversaw the acquisition of Fictionwise, an online retailer of e-books, the introduction of the company’s own e-bookstore, and the launch of the Nook, the company’s electronic reader to compete with Amazon’s Kindle.

It's that last résumé line that should really worry the stockholders. It's unlikely that Lynch was solely responsible for the Nook debacle. Surely the Riggio brothers were driving that bus. And most of the other e-book reader competitors have stumbled on the path too: Plastic Logic's Que has been delayed again, this time until summer. Irex's reader has gotten weak reviews, and Amazon still controls 90 percent of the publishing in this format.

Choosing Lynch would seem to imply the Riggios think they can come up with a dazzling growth strategy that will mute Burkle's basic critique of their skills as retailers. Were they unwilling to install a turnaround specialist? Or do they still grasp at the dream that the Nook can come from behind to not only make up its huge deficit against the Kindle but also save their whole business? That would seem like a long shot.

This longstanding dispute between Facebook and ConnectU, the founders of which accused Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their Web site plans six years ago, is back in the news. Last week, a New York judge reviewed ConnectU's founders’ request to force Facebook to reveal information about the value of the company. Why do they care so much? Isn’t it painful to hear about the success of their now-billionaire former buddy whom they say stabbed them in the back? Well, it turns out that whether they like it or not, Mark Zuckerberg has some information that they'd really like to get their hands on.

In 2004, ConnectU sued Facebook and tried to shut it down. Ultimately, the lawsuit ended in a settlement. In 2007, Facebook reportedly dished out “$20 million in cash and 1,253,326 shares of common stock." At the time, all of those shares sounded like a good deal to ConnectU. But the problem with accepting a settlement based on shares in a still-private company is kind of obvious: You really don’t know what they’re worth. The New York Law Journal explains:

“The four ConnectU plaintiffs say they signed the settlement agreement in the belief that Facebook's shares were worth $35.90 each. That assumption was based on Microsoft's October 2007 investment in Facebook for a 1.4 percent stake which, according to a press release at the time, valued Facebook at $15 billion. But in March 2008, while finalizing the settlement documents, ConnectU's former owners said they discovered that a more recent valuation of Facebook's common stock priced shares at $8.88 each. They later learned that Facebook had filed tax documents with the state of California valuing its common stock at $7.75 a share as of February 2008.”

While the ConnectU founders had estimated the settlement to be around $65 million, they realized pretty soon after that it could be worth a lot less. Since then, they've been trying, like many others, to pinpoint precisely how much a share in Facebook should be worth. The ConnectU team’s latest argument is that it needs to know Facebook’s value in order to pay its law firm, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, a fair amount. The firm has been expecting a 20 percent contingency fee for its work on the case. And it’s difficult to figure out 20 percent of a figure that is impossible to pin down without Facebook’s help. The law firm, for obvious reasons, would like to believe that Facebook’s value is astronomical, thus boosting how much money that it's owed. ConnectU has told these lawyers that it was misled at the time of the settlement about the Facebook’s value, and that the contingency fee should actually be much smaller. If Facebook were forced to fork over its private data, this debate may have been settled once and for all. But it looks like the ConnectU guys are going to have to wait to find out how much Facebook is worth, just like everyone else. Last week, the judge ruled that Facebook doesn’t have to open its books.

Forbes' richest people list has a very small number of women, especially ones who didn't inherit money. While some might rationalize that away, Double X's Helaine Olen argues that the list indicates a lack of female power. Sarah Gilbert at AOL’s Daily Finance has decided that the paucity of females on the Forbes list of the world’s richest people is a cause for celebration, not dismay. “Enormous wealth is not a mark of honor, but an indictment,” Gilbert writes. “It is proof that, instead of working to better the lives of employees and consumers who are 'stakeholders' of your business enterprises, you have instead extracted vast wealth.” She helpfully adds that she can see how those who created this list might have trouble with the findings: “No doubt in their worldview, this list represents power.” Read more about what the Forbes list means for women.

The New York Times has an odd story this morning about the battle over e-book pricing and control of the e-book market. What makes it odd is the absence of anything that could be considered a hard fact. We're told that Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN) are trying to use their strong positions in their respective markets—Amazon has 90 percent of the e-book market, Apple has a stranglehold on the iPhone and iPad—to force small players to conform to their prefered business plans.

That makes sense. It would make for a fascinating article if we could evaluate any of the evidence ourselves. Instead, we get reporting that barely rises to the level of hearsay:

Amazon has also begun talking with smaller publishers that have not yet signed contracts with Apple. In those conversations, according to one person briefed on the discussions, Amazon has said it prefers to retain its wholesale pricing model, as opposed to Apple’s so-called agency model.

But some of these smaller publishers have begun talking with Apple, which has effectively said that any publisher that wishes to sell its books on the iPad must offer the same terms to all booksellers. In other words, to do business with Apple, publishers must export Apple’s business model to all retailers. Amazon, by contrast, has not promised to adopt the agency ap proach for any but the largest publishers.

Amazon appears to be responding to the Apple threat by waging a publisher-by-publisher battle, trying to keep as many books as possible out of Apple’s hands, while preserving as much flexibility as it can to set its own prices.

Although I understand and sympathize with the difficulties in reporting a story that involves negotiations, the story's credibility is undermined by the reflexive use of received ideas that really ought to be examined more closely.

For one, the Times warns darkly that if Amazon has reverted to its ham-handed strategy of refusing to sell the physical books of publishers who don't fall in line that they—Amazon—risk real reputational damage. That makes  sense. And the Times quotes a chatty Cathy from the industry to that effect.

There is, however, a little evidence—hardly conclusive—that Amazon's customers are on their side in the fight for lower-priced e-books. According to Stephen Windwalker's survey of more than 1800 Kindle owners—surely zealots, but also the customers whose good opinion matters most to Amazon, a two-thirds majority supported Amazon against Macmillan.

Finally, the Times story insists on proffering this easily refuted version of Amazon's PR message: "It sells most new releases and best sellers at a heavily discounted standard price of $9.99." Most? Standard? Really? A quick tour of Amazon shows that $9.99 is hardly the standard price for Kindle editions and certainly not the price that is most visible on the site. Of the top 100 Kindle titles, only a handful are priced at $9.99. New nonfiction books being promoted on Amazon's homepage carry prices above $10 and there's a new, interesting price-point in the $8 range that has begun to appear for some books, both fiction and nonfiction.

Whatever is going on with Kindle pricing, there's little that is standard about it. The premise of the story is that the business model for e-books is still quite fluid. That's what makes these vague reports news. So why undercut that premise by conceding the very thing that is at issue. No one knows where the industry will settle on prices, formats, royalty splits, and even whether electronic publishing is an offshoot of physical publishing or its own medium. With time, we'll find out.

Different regulations have been proposed to prevent this recession from happening again. However, Slate's Eliot Spitzer believes the easiest way to control companies is for shareholders to use the power they have.

The economic cataclysm has shaken the most fervent believers in the invisible hand, from Judge Richard Posner to Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, leading many of them—and most of the American public—to support a fundamental shift in the regulatory framework controlling our financial markets. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., has introduced his financial reform bill, and there's vigorous discussion about regulating everything from CEO compensation to use of corporate funds for political advertising to appropriate capital and leverage ratios.

Read why company owners are more powerful than regulations.

The Leaf, Nissan’s all-electric car, is scheduled to arrive later this year and compete with General Motor’s extended range plug-in hybrid, the Chevy Volt. The two cars are very different, but both Nissan and GM have started to roll out important information about them. While Chevy has been showcasing the Volt at SXSW, much to the delight of the madly Twittering masses, Nissan has made a couple of Leaf announcements.

First, the Leaf is going to be priced at almost $40,000, and possibly more—at least in Japan. All along, Nissan and its peppy CEO, Carlos Ghosn, have been hinting that the Leaf would come in under $30K, once tax credit were taken into account. Although they’ve been consistently vague. That now appears to have been a bit of a marketing ruse.

Second, Nissan says it will build the Leaf at an existing factory in Sunderland, England. Yes, not exactly a hotbed of EV innovation, at least not of the Silicon Valley-influenced, California startup flavor. Here’s Nissan’s justification, according to the Telegraph:

[W]hile the carmaker still worries about currency fluctuations, the broader benefits of keeping manufacturing in Sunderland have won over the firm's management. What Nissan really likes about Sunderland is that the plant has kept its costs low while keeping quality control high. Nissan also likes the location as it is close to Nissan’s main European markets, which can be served very quickly from the Port of Tyne.

Taken together, these two announcements suggest that the Nissan now thinks the Leaf may not be the boffo performer in the U.S. it might have. Which is understandable, as the Leaf is based on a small, Euro-ish hatchback design, the price of gas in America is staying well under $4/gallon (with an oil-supply glut currently working itself out worldwide), and it’s becoming clear that home-based rapid-charging infrastructure may be costly.

This doesn’t mean the Leaf won’t show up, and sell in the U.S. in decent numbers. But it does provide GM with a competitive advantage as it introduces the Chevy Volt. Obviously, the opportunity has presented itself to price the Volt very attractively, relative to the competition. The close the coming in under $30,000 Volt is, the better it will be for GM.

On St. Patrick’s Day, Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, D-Ohio, voiced his support to vote yes on the health care bill, reports the Washington Post. Kucinich previously opposed the bill because it “would perpetuate the for-profit insurance system.” Another Democrat, Rep. Dale E. Kildee, Mich., previously opposed the bill because of abortion provisions. And he isn’t the only anti-abortionist who supports Obama’s health care reform: 59,000 nuns declared their support for the legislation. Their letter claims the bill “will uphold longstanding conscience protections and it will make historic new investments ... in support of pregnant women.” Opposition to the bill is still strong, according to the New York Times. House Republican leader Rep. John A Boehner, Ohio, said the party will continue to put pressure on Democrats and that they would have to choose between voting with the president or voting with constituents. With the vote potentially taking place this Sunday, Democrats still haven’t nailed down the required 216 votes needed for passage of the bill and, according to the Wall Street Journal, still need 10 votes. Fiscally conservative Democrats are waiting for the new budget, which was being revised Wednesday, before choosing how to vote. A change was made to the tax on high-value plans and how “the tax’s threshold would change over time.”

The president has a busy week. President Obama met with potential voters for his health care bill, and now the $18 billion jobs bill is expected to finally land on his desk Thursday, reports the Washington Post. The bill took a long road to Obama’s signature; after it was passed by the Senate, the House made some changes, and the Senate had to vote on it a second time. This time 11 Republicans joined the Democrats present for the vote. For the rest of 2010 companies hiring anyone unemployed for more than 60 days would get a break paying their Social Security taxes. In addition, for each of those workers who stay employed for more than a year, the company gets a $1,000 tax credit. Although the bill was an achievement in bipartisanship, there are critics with two very different stances. Some wonder “whether the legislation is big enough to make a dent in the nation's persistent unemployment problem,” and Republicans believe the bill is more debt than anything else.

Although bailouts for the big banks will be linked to the recession, the smaller banks are the ones lagging on repaying bailout funds, reports the Washington Post. All of the largest nine banks have repaid the money, but “hundreds of community banks have yet to return their bailouts.” According to Linus Wilson, a finance professor at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, there were $78.1 million in missed payments February. The large banks may have been blamed for the recession, but the small ones are still feeling the sting of it.

Small banks were proposed on Monday to be taken away from the Federal Reserve’s regulatory power, and now Chairman Ben Bernanke explained to the House financial services committee that it would be a bad idea, according to the New York Times. The more than 5,000 smaller banks would go to other regulators while the Fed keeps responsibility of only those banks with $50 billion or more in assets. This would leave only 35 banks under the Fed’s watch. Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Thomas Hoenig sided with Bernanke, saying that the Fed is “‘not the central bank of Wall Street. It’s the central bank of the United States.” The new proposal would focus the Fed’s power on New York and Washington.

With the iPad’s ship date less than a month away, Amazon (AMZN) isn’t pulling punches with publishers anymore, reports the New York Times. The company is threatening to stop selling some publishers’ books online unless they agree to concessions. Amazon is trying to keep prices low, and just more than a month ago it removed the “buy” option from MacMillan books when the publisher pressure Amazon.com about raising book prices. Amazon sees some publishers’ prices as “needlessly high.” Meanwhile Apple (AAPL) reached an agreement with five of the largest publishers to sell e-books of new adult fiction and nonfiction at $12.99-$14.99. Amazon’s approach makes it necessary for publishers to sign three-year contracts, which they are hesitant to do in the rapidly changing digital book world. No one knows how they’ll need to adjust in the time it takes for the contract end.

The Big Money presents the Disrupters, a new podcast that zeroes in on companies like Facebook, Google (GOOG), Hulu, and Apple (AAPL) as they change the face of American business. Chadwick Matlin hosts. On today's show, the Disrupters explores whether Twitter will soon include ads, and the rise of location-based apps.

Listen using our audio player below, or download the MP3.

Subscribe to the "Money Talks Podcast" on iTunes.

“The little green figures that dance on your screen
Say everything you want to hear and nothing they mean.”

-Elvis Costello

Hi folks,

Is the tone of The Big Short “angry and outraged,” as Marion would have it or “resigned and weary” and perhaps not quite angry enough, as it seems to Paul? I feel like in this discussion I am, as I've been in much of the ongoing debate about Wall Street, the odd man out. The book is all of these by turns, and there's no contradiction there. The two can go together: Socrates' outsized outrage is polished and sharpened by his cool detachment.

To me, though, asking whether Michael Lewis is left resigned or outraged by the character of Wall Street is really jumping the gun. “How angry is Michael Lewis?” or “How angry should we be at Wall Street?” seem to me to be much less interesting questions than “What happened, and why?” The Big Short gives an answer that is direct and compelling: People who built the models and instruments of finance were willfully blind to what was happening in the real world of the home buyers, mortgage brokers, and crooked lenders that all of Wall Street's instruments were built on.

The heroes of The Big Short—and yes, Chad, I do think they are heroes—are a small group of investors who did see what was happening and made money on it. They are the heroes of the book—not because of the money they made but because of the clarity with which they perceived what the bankers on and off Wall Street refused to see. Paul, you say that the main characters of The Big Short are “vapid, tortured souls who sacrifice their inner and outer lives to make a big pile of cash.” Surely there is more to Steve Eisman, the man we spend the most time with, than this? Yes, he makes money. But is this the only motivation of a man almost preternaturally unable to restrain himself from telling everyone around him that they're full of shit?

The Big Short is a book about people at the margins of Wall Street, and this is key to what this story is about. This is typical of Lewis' protagonists. They are on the outside and, being outside, they have no vested interest in maintaining the delusions of those on the inside. They don't have access to more tools than the big investment banks. On the contrary, they use publicly available information—information that nobody on Wall Street bothers to look at because the models are supposed to take care of it. They are able to see the ragingly obvious stuff that Wall Street ignores. They read through mortgage-bond prospectuses and find that they are full of crap loans or, as Lewis puts it, that “complicated financial stuff was being dreamed up for the sole purpose of lending money to people who could never repay it.”

This last part—that the entire edifice of the bond and derivatives market was built on loans that would never be repaid—was something that was evident to the folks putting no money down on $500,000 condos in Miami, obvious to the mortgage brokers persuading them to do it, and obvious to the bankers shoveling the no-doc, no-asset, no-nothing loans that made it possible. The people it was not obvious to were those at the top of the food chain, the bankers who would never be bothered with looking at the loans they were packaging into bonds to find that they were going to people who could not possibly pay them back. This was the original sin of the financial crisis.

How much of the blindness of Wall Street was willful and how much situational? Clearly there were elements of both. Thus the quote I started with from Elvis Costello: The business of Wall Street is in disguising the messy realities behind the little green figures that dance on the screen.

This has been the case for a long time. After college, I spent three weeks temping for a now-retired analyst at a now-defunct investment bank. The analyst was responsible for metals and mining, and much of his work consisted of traveling around the world to make sure that when a mining company said they'd dug a hole in the ground, there was actually something coming out of it. Every few minutes I'd take a call from a client asking about this or that company. My job was fending off half these calls. “Are you kidding?” the analyst would shout at me, “I'm not gonna say shit about [company X]. You know what [company X] is? It's just a mob front."

This is the ugly stuff the clients never got to hear about. Much better to give them “reports” full of agate tables and wave them away with vague and tepid recommendations. But at least my (temporary) boss knew which companies were legit and which were frauds, even if he didn't want to dig too far into it. What happened in the subprime market went a step beyond that. The folks at the subprime-lending operations knew that their business was a fraud, but they certainly had no incentive to say so. And those on Wall Street who built the bonds and derivatives had every incentive not to know and not to find out.

Except that in the end, as The Big Short amply demonstrates, they did, in fact, have lots of reasons to find out. Whatever frauds bankers and subprime lenders perpetrated on the public were compounded by the damage the bankers inflicted on themselves. When people like Steve Eisman came calling and made absolutely clear to them what kind of catastrophe was coming, they didn't listen. And it all came down on their heads.

Paul, it sounds to me from your post that no response to the current crisis will satisfy you but the total reform of the character of Wall Street by excising the evil of the profit motive. Good luck with that. In the effort to reform human character, the evidence of the last few millennia is against you. I'd set a simpler goal here: It is to fix the comprehensive disconnect between the real world and the models of finance.

I don't care what motives the Eismans of the world have, whether it is to make a pile of money for themselves or to give a one fingered salute to the windbags and charlatans, or both. There will be people who read The Big Short as a how-to guide for making money in the markets. That doesn't bother me; I don't know if it bothers Michael Lewis.

Some people will approach the book in a spirit of self-interest and take away from it only a skepticism of the baroque models and received wisdom of finance, along with a sense that reading prospectuses pays, knowledge pays, clarity pays, and self-delusion has a price. Sure, that's a narrow reading that misses the nuances of The Big Short. But it's still good for the markets, good for the economy, and good for the world. If it turns out to be profitable to some folks on Wall Street themselves, so be it.

The experiment that was meant to change publishing ended today as Robert Miller was named the new group publisher of Workman, the quirky, independent house founded by the quirky and difficult Peter Workman.

Miller took pains to try to tie his experience at HarperStudio—the imprint that was meant to start from a clean slate and remake publishing entirely—to Workman's own leadership in the industry, telling the New York Times' Motoko Rich:

“Peter has really been doing the things I have been trying to do at HarperStudio since 1968,” said Mr. Miller. “He has avoided the pitfalls of trade publishing to an extraordinary degree, publishing books that sell over time. Advances and returns are not an issue the way they are at other publishers. I’m eager to see how he does it.”

No one should blame Miller for wanting his own fresh start. HarperStudio was never going to solve publishing's problems, because it was saddled with the corporation's costs. Touting a 50-50 profit share sounds impressive only to the uninitiated. Anyone with a half-decent sense of publishing's financials knows that 50-50 is no bargain when you have to subtract the dead-hand costs of a publishing conglomerate. It's also not a number that is much different from the traditional royalty structure. So anyone with the option to get paid a decent advance would take it, leaving Miller publishing the books that no one else wanted. His one success involved pretending he wasn't paying a $1 million advance—by committing to 10 $100,000 titles.

The grand experiment of HarperStudio wasn't really Miller's idea anyway. Or, at least, it wasn't only his idea. HarperStudio was the last effort of the previous regime's frenetic attempts to reinvent publishing. By the time Miller had arrived at HarperCollins, the company had been through a massive multiyear effort to rethink its business.

Christened Publishing+, the program had been run by someone with little experience as a management consultant but close personal ties to the former CEO. Even with that handicap, Publishing+ was able to identify some important areas where HarperCollins could move beyond the core competency of distributing books to chainstores, Amazon (AMZN), and big-box retailers.

Many of those areas of effort were smart ideas that required savvy execution. Some were quite successful—at least in their initial forays—but never received backing from the C-suite. Harper got a front-page New York Times article about its collaboration with Saks Fifth Avenue, part of an effort to launch a custom-publishing operation. Rather than capitalize on the interest, the program simply withered from a lack of management support and follow-up.

Other efforts at creating stronger, more easily identified brands within Harper's matrix of imprints involved great effort and expenditure but didn't get much traction. That isn't to say that Publishing+ was without success. Harper launched a speaker's bureau at the company and was quickly imitated by the other houses. Though no one has yet been able to turn speaking into a meaningful profit center.

Though launched with great fanfare, one by one, the Publishing+ initiatives were not so much killed as allowed to die from neglect or diverted from their own goals by the same leadership that launched them. Could Publishing+ have succeeded under executives with more guts and better management skills? It's hard to say.

Much of the fault lies with the nature of the publishing conglomerate. To date, not one of the big six publishers has found a way to repurpose the company's expertise as packagers and distributors of ideas and entertainment. The fairly new CEO of Random House arrived with a reputation for having done just that with a giant printing firm. So far, Markus Dohle hasn't followed up that success in the book world.

Publishing would hardly be the first industry to become captive to itself. Even a world-beater like Google still really only has one product that matters: contextual ads. That product is so strong, it gives Google a lot of room to indulge in experiments like Voice, Buzz, and Android (not to mention space travel).

Publishing, on the other hand, desperately needs a new business to bridge into. Shilly-shallying around while hoping that market conditions will improve, or trying to innovate one's way to better margins won't cut it. Harper has shown through Publishing+ and HarperStudio that there's really no way to spin its core business in a new direction. Instead, the six big publishers will have to start thinking about what is absolutely necessary in their business and what is expendable. They'll have to get very aggressive about doing more with fewer bodies, less infrastructure and publishing fewer titles.

What Miller's experience at HarperStudio acknowledges is that big publishing has only one business, the blockbuster business. How that business gets managed—instead of how publishers can grow into another role—is the only important question going forward.

"Tennessee, you are worthless!" wrote someone on Find the Shake, a real-time, user-generated tracker of McDonald's (MCD) Shamrock Shakes. This was a response to a fellow Tennessean who had complained: "I LIVE IN A VAST SHAMROCK SHAKE-LESS WASTELAND."

Luckier are the folks in and around remote Greenville, Ill. "Rte 127 right off of I-70," advised a burping, green-lipped person there.

The site fills a need because McDonald's now offers the once-ubiquitous shakes only at select locations. Peter Hartlaub of the San Francisco Chronicle says Find the Shake is "poorly designed." Quite so. It's also true that following the advice of a random person online is rarely a good idea. So if you're thinking of heading to the Greenville Mickey D's (say, from Tennessee), it's probably a good idea to call ahead.

Given that he's writing for a San Francisco paper, Hartlaub couldn't help but inject some P.C. into his account. "Thank you McDonald's," he wrote, "for not running the marginally xenophobic commercials that we used to get in the 1980s ... where everyone was talking like the Lucky Charms leprechaun, wearing cheap green hats, dancing badly and saying the word "blarney."

Yes. Because the time has come to put a final end to marginal xenophobia, particularly when it's aimed at the downtrodden Irish-American community.

You didn't want to know this, but Hartlaub also gives us the stark nutritional facts on Shamrock Shakes: The 16-ounce version has 550 calories and 13 grams of fat. "But the shakes also have 13 grams of protein, which sounds sort of healthy," he writes. "Take that, health police!"

Here’s a prediction: App sales will reach a whopping $18.846 billion in 2015.

But don’t take my word for it. Because I just made that number up. Actually it came from a random number generator, but I still think it sounds pretty good. Especially with the word “whopping” in there.

Tossing out those numbers, whether they are the result of long hard research or a randomizing algorithm, has a seductive virtue: It attracts attention. And there is a huge appetite for candy-coated factoids like these. The top story on Techmeme this morning was about a research report from GetJar, a mobile-app directory, that says app sales will reach $17.5 billion in 2012.

I don’t mean to to pick on GetJar or its report. Their estimate may be spot on. But I keep seeing a series of data points that usually don’t mesh. Not long ago, research2guidance estimated that app sales would reach $15.7 billion in 2013. Both sound plausible to me, but I have no idea which is more accurate.

Contradictory research is evident in other areas as well: As I pointed out earlier, the percentage of apps in Google’s Android Market that are free is either 61 percent of the total, or 99 percent. Not a slight discrepancy.

It may simply boil down to a difference in methodologies, but I can’t imagine any methodology accounting for the inherent unpredictability of the mobile web. Stock analysts have a hard enough time guessing the quarterly profits of a single company. Estimates are especially tough to make in the app economy, where things are changing so quickly that very few people can say with any confidence where things will be even six months down the road. But the flip side of this dilemma is that, most likely, everyone will forget your prediction and you won’t be called out if it’s wrong.

Still, it’s hard, for me at least, to resist these data points. Like those news stories that simplify the world into a list, they are like donuts—sugared gimmicks that appear to be a good idea at the time, but in the end may not be the healthiest thing.

And for anyone who really wants to know how big app sales will be in a several years, I suggest that random number generator. At least it’s up front about being random.

As Google's (GOOG) departure from China appears increasingly inevitable, the stock market is scrambling to place bets on who will fill the vacuum. So far, the big winner is Baidu.

Baidu, of course, is the domestic Chinese search engine that controls two-thirds of the market. Google has never quite been able to crack the Chinese search-ad market, and now it appears that investors think its main competitor will have the field for itself. Yesterday, for the first time in history, Baidu's stock closed at a higher value than Google's. At the moment, its lead is still barely holding, with Baidu trading at $566.40 a share to Google's 566.00.

Of course, that's not a real metric for the value of either company. As the San Francisco Chronicle puts it, "The significance of the parity in the company's stock prices is mostly symbolic: Google's market valuation, at $179.08 billion, is far higher than Baidu's $20.05 billion because Google has issued far more shares than Baidu."

Still, the news raises an interesting question: Who will enter the Chinese market when and if Google leaves? Bloggingstocks.com writer Brian White says Microsoft (MSFT) might: "Would Microsoft want to make a large push into the Chinese market with its Bing search engine, even if that means censored results to comply with the government's request?" he writes. "Stranger things have happened."

The Wall Street Journal's Loretta Chao thinks that the instant messaging firm Tencent—the "biggest Internet company most people outside China have never heard of"—could make a go of it. "Tencent is developing its own search engine that could enable it to take advantage if Google closes Google.cn, as expected, within weeks," she writes.

And Silicon Alley Insider's Henry Blodget passes on a rumor that maybe-possibly-ex-Google employees in China have secretly met to develop their own search engine and make a go of it. Ain't capitalism, technology, and despotism grand? They make for so many interesting combinations ...

Throughout The Big Money’s first 18 months of life, its commenting system has been … frustrating. But today we are proud to announce an entirely new system that should make it easier for you to talk to us, and for us to talk to you.

It’s called Echo, and it’s run by JS-Kit, a neat little Web developer. For those of you who are frequent Slate readers, it should look familiar, as it's the same system our parent magazine installed in February. At the bottom of every article and blog post, you’ll see a space to log in and leave a comment. You can create your own account or log in with your Facebook, Twitter, or Google user name and password. For those of you who come to TBM via Slate, your commenting login from Slate will work on TBM, too. Just log in via your JS-Kit account. (Those who created an account on our old system will have to re-register, but we promise that this time will be far less painful than in the past.)

The comments themselves are also more interactive. Any of your postings can be shared with your friends on Facebook, followers on Twitter, or any of your connections on the other supported services. You can also reply to fellow commenters, tell them you like their posts, or flag any inappropriate or spam messages that you see. All commenters have their own profiles, which you can find by clicking on their profile names and viewing their details. There you’ll be able to find all the comments they’ve recently left, allowing you to develop commenter-crushes on the smartest TBM readers.

Finally, you’ll be able to follow any of the comment debates yourself. Underneath the commenting box is a button that says “Follow.” Click that to subscribe to the post’s RSS feed or to get notified by e-mail every time someone responds to you or the thread.

It’s only appropriate that we ask what you think about the new platform. Please use the new platform to leave your thoughts at the bottom of this post so we can know whether we're the only ones who like this system better. Or, if you prefer telling us the old-fashioned way, e-mail us at tbmcontact@thebigmoney.com. We’re looking forward to not just hearing from you, but talking with you.

New PayPal app transfers money and pays bills by “bumping” iPhones. (Independent)

Google (GOOG) expands handwriting-recognition feature to phones running Android 1.6. (Google Mobile Blog)

Meanwhile, Google is trying its best to unify the four versions of Android that are used on various phones. (JKOnTheRun)

RIM's new push service will send news, sports, and other content updates to BlackBerry smartphones. (Computerworld)

Microsoft’s (MSFT) app-design guide for Windows Phone 7 reveals how, in many ways, it’s the same old Microsoft. (Fast Company)

WTF Apple ban of the day: Protective films for iPhone glass screens. (iLounge)

Austin is the “California of Texas,” according to GM’s regional communications manager in Dallas. And this is why General Motors has brought the Volt, possibly the most important car it will ever build, to SXSW. The Austin Statesman had a look and asked around. Here's what it found out:

Mike Omotoso, senior manager of powertrain forecasting for J.D. Power & Associates, said GM's previous hybrid vehicles have not had a lot of success, so Volt "is very important for GM's image. It's important for them to have success in an advanced-technology vehicle."

Although Volt is being launched during a difficult economy, J.D. Power & Associates projects Volt sales of 8,000 to 10,000 in 2011, and between 40,000 and 50,000 per year after that, Omotoso said.

"This car is different enough that it could do well," Omotoso said. "Also it has a unique shape, like the Prius does, and we expect early adopters to be attracted to that."

So it’s sort-kinda what’s under the hood that counts. But what really matter is...design!