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34 BUSINESS

Samsung'ssurpnsmgsuccessFarhad ManjooSlate. com

The realvictims ofHerbalifeKaren E. KleinBusinessweek.com

Africa'sbrighteningfutureJake BrightTheDailyBeast.com

Best columnsWe all snickered when Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Note in 2011,said Farhad Manjoo. Bur "the joke's on me and my smart-ass techjourno colleagues." The unwieldy smartphone-tablet hybrid, or"phablet," was a hit, and the Korean conglomerate is "having a mo-ment." Samsung has become the world's leading smartphone-makerand largest tech company by taking an aggressive, "see-what-sticks"approach. The company churns out everything from phones and tab-lets to TVs and supersmart home appliances-a perfect strategy for anera when it's impossible to divine which new gadget will be the nexthot thing. "Be in enough places and you're bound to catch somethingno one was predicting-like, for instance, the world's bizarre love af-fair with phablets." Samsung's appetite for risk-and firm sense ofwhen to cut its losses-has helped catapult it straight to the top. Andwhile rival tech giants, like the aesthetics-obsessed Apple, subscribeto "lofty philosophies," all Samsung "wants to do is make stuff thatwe'll buy." We skeptics have been left eating crow while Sainsung hasproved that "customers, not companies, know best."

"It's been a wild ride lately for Herbalife," said Karen Klein. Onehedge fund titan, BillAckman, has called the multilevel marketing firma pyramid scheme and bet $1 billion that the government will shut itdown; another, Dan Loeb, is buying up Herbalife stock, convinced thatthe market for its nutrition products is real. But "what gets lost in thenoise about the hedge fund scuffle is the pain of ordinary people whohave been burned." Multilevel marketing companies like Herbalifework by getting independent distributors to recruit more salespeople.It's not easy. Nicole Lopez, a single mom in Utah, spent seven yearspaying off the $9,000 in debt she accrued to keep her Herbalife status.Almost 16 million Americans participate in the $28.5 billion multilevelmarketing industry, and critics say more than 90 percent of them "ei-ther break even or lose money." Yet thanks to intensive lobbying, theFederal Trade Commission has no "specific regulations in place for theindustry." These companies prosper with ease because what they're"really selling is hope, something most people are eager to buy."

While most of the world is still recovering from the Great Recession,"Africa is booming," said Jake Bright. By 2015, the continent is pro-jected to claim seven of the world's 10 fastest-growing economies. Itsgrowing consumer class will soon rival India's and Russia's in spendingpower. The boom means big things in particular for the continent'smobile-phone and banking-technology sectors. "Traditional markettraders who previously practiced under-the-mattress banking are get-ting their first ATM cards and small-business loans." In a continentwhere 80 percent of the adult population was previously "unbanked,"financial-services firms are finding droves of new consumers. The re-gion still has a "massive need" for better roads, bridges, and power,but those very infrastrucrure gaps "have spurred innovation in Africanmobile-phone technology," redefining banking "by making phones all-in-one credit cards, ATMs, and money-transfer devices." As Africa'seconomic boom plays out, "expect to hear less about safaris and celeb-rity charities, and more about global investment, new entrepreneurs,and rising fortunes."

Viewpoint"There are many reasons why big businesses can be better than small businesses. How wellwould Amazon orWalmart work as a small business?The scale they operate at allows them tolower costs and operate more efficiently, and we would lose this if they were replaced by smallbusinesses. Would our lives be better if instead of Apple we had 10,000 small computer compa-nies? Economies of scale and scope abound in our economy; if they-didn't you wouldn't observeas many large businesses as you do. We would be better off if people would stop romanticizingsmall businesses and instead focused on the outcomes that really matter, like economic growthand unemployment:' Adam Ozimek in Forbes.com

THE WEEK January 25, 2013

Spotlight

Carlos Mucha

It may have been "the singlemost important commentin the history of Internetcomments;' said MatthewO'Brien in TheAtlantic.com.In 2011, a blog commenterknown as Beowulf offered asimple solution to America'sdebt problem: Have the U.S.Treasury mint a $1 trillionplatinum coin. Beowulf'sidea languished in obscurityuntil late last year, whenit took off "as an inventiveway around the debt ceil-ing:' So many economistsand journalists were talkingabout "the platinum coinoption" that last week theObama administration fi-nally had to announce that itwasn't under consideration.So who is this genius Beo-wulf? An Atlanta lawyer,Carlos Mucha, who nevertook an economics class.

Rare is the blogger whocan claim he almost re-engineered "the funding ofthe entire federal budget;'said Ryan Tate in Wired. com.Mucha says he came upwith his idea after readingan article about travelersearning frequent flyer milesby buying up commemora-tive coins from the U.S.Mint, claiming rewardspoints on their credit cards,and depositing the $1 coinsback into their bank ac-counts. "It may be an exam-ple of the guy who doesn'tknow the rules;' said Mucha."If I had economic training, Iwouldn't have even had thisthought:'

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