He and McLean previously worked together on All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis, about the 2008 market crash. NEW YORK Business writers Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera are collaborating on a critical take of the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic. All thats left to tally is the environmental and financial damage. Workers monitoring a hydraulic fracturing operation near Wink, Texas. . Copyright 2023 WSLS.com is managed by Graham Digital and published by Graham Media Group, a division of Graham Holdings. Occidental is just one piece of the puzzle. Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How Its Changing the World., stocks that make up the S.&P. Blackstones Schwarzman has ties to Trump. I dont think any of us can really believe what we saw today, one industry analyst told AP. Archive Wall Street Too Big to Fail, COVID-19 Edition: How Private Equity Is Winning the Coronavirus Crisis April 9, 2020 From the. Portfolio, a Penguin Random House imprint, announced Wednesday that the two had reached an agreement for a news-breaking, character-driven narrative revealing the forces that rendered critical American institutions ill-equipped to cope with the deadliest pandemic since the 1918 Spanish flu and the economic consequences of that failure.. Regarding another ongoing Covid danger, that of reinfections, a virologist sets the record straight: There has yet to be a variant that negates the benefits of vaccines.. They subprimed the American energy ecosystem, says a longtime energy market observer. If you like the episode and want to hear more, sign up as a monthly member at patreon.com/hotbotheredclimate today. McLean is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and co-author of the Enron book The Smartest Guys in the Room. Nocera is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and co-author of Indentured, about the NCAA. Getting the government out of the housing market would mean saying goodbye to the 30-year mortgage. Bethany McLean, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, is the author of "Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It's Changing the World." The Times is committed to publishing a. Copyright 2023 WSLS.com is managed by Graham Digital and published by Graham Media Group, a division of Graham Holdings. Months into the outbreak, no one really knows how well many of the screening tests work, and experts at top medical centers say it is time to do the studies to find out. [17], Last edited on 21 November 2022, at 20:31, "Hibbing grad warns of economic crisis below ground", "What Working At Goldman Sachs Taught Legendary Business Journalist Bethany McLean", "Meet Patrick Byrne: Bitcoin Messiah, CEO of Overstock, Scourge of Wall Street", "BYRNE'S HOT MAIL; OVERSTOCK CHIEF'S TEMPER ERUPTS IN MESSAGES", Financial System's Top Risk, Hiding in Plain Sight, "U.S. mortgage giants under the microscope", "Loughlin, Giannulli lawyer is prosecutors' 'worst nightmare', "Q & A with Bethany McLean, Author of 'All the Devils Are Here', "Enron tale author Bethany McLean has a new book she wrote from her Chicago home", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bethany_McLean&oldid=1123096713, This page was last edited on 21 November 2022, at 20:31. He and McLean previously worked together on All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis, about the 2008 market crash. Its still unclear where most of this debt is held. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com. She was previously married to Christopher Roberts Wilford. The half decade from 2013 to 2018 saw the most private-equity deals over any five-year period in American history. BLOOMINGTON A total of 208 new COVID-19 cases have been reported by the McLean County Health Department from Jan. 27 through Friday. Confirmed cases include those reported since the beginning of the current active outbreak and may include cases that . The industrys lack of profits wasnt exactly a secret. Create a Website Account - Manage notification subscriptions, save form progress and more. As a result, fracking stocks badly underperformed the market. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. If private equity is handed billions in taxpayer money, it could use some of it to pay themselves hefty fees today, then pocket even more of it down the road, when they sell their portfolio companies and collect their 20% of the taxpayer-enabled gains. Bethany McLean is a journalist and contributing editor for Vanity Fair. We really need Trump to do something or hes going to lose all the energy states in this election, Mr. Sheffield told CNBC in late March. Thanks to all the cheap money made available by the Fed, companies owned by private-equity firms could simply refinance their debts at lower rates, thereby getting a fresh lease on life. She co-authored a book on the 2008 financial crisis titled All the Devils Are Here. (This may not surprise anyone who is attempting to be productive while working in close quarters with their children.). The active outbreak list is intended to inform the public of the current COVID-19 outbreaks in Los Angeles County. [1] It details how the financial crisis bubbled up from a volatile, and bipartisan, mixture of government meddling and laissez-faire. Like the big banks in 2008, private equity is holding us all hostage. Pension funds that have poured money into private equity firms may take a hit soon, too. Veuer's Tony Spitz has the details. Check out the full Hot & Bothered archive here. After the United States engaged in a high-stakes negotiation with Russia and Saudi Arabia to curtail production, a tentative deal was struck on Thursday. The industrys boosters argue that technological gains, such as drilling ever bigger wells, and clustering wells more tightly together to reduce the cost of moving equipment, eventually would lead to a gusher of profits. Which explains why ILPA wrote to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell last week, arguing that companies backed by private equity should be allowed to access the relief funds provided in the CARES Act. Portfolio, a Penguin Random House imprint, announced Wednesday that the two had reached an agreement for a news-breaking, character-driven narrative revealing the forces that rendered critical American institutions ill-equipped to cope with the deadliest pandemic since the 1918 Spanish flu and the economic consequences of that failure.The title and release date have not yet been determined. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Looking for more? FILE - In this Friday, June 12, 2020 file photo, a nurse uses a swab to perform a coronavirus test in Salt Lake City. But there are ways to make it work better. 1. So if Blackstones investments crater, the teachers, firefighters, and health care workers who are counting on those investments to generate the returns necessary to pay their pensions will suffer. In 2018, according to analytics firm eVestment, pension funds in the U.S. and the U.K. pumped 27% of their fresh allocations of money into private-equity funds, up from 25% the year before. Even before the coronavirus crisis, the spigot was drying up. So private equity is pushing to waive those rules, arguing that small firms should not be penalized for having been bought out by big investors. "[3] The article noted some irregularities in Enron's financial documents that were available to the public, suggesting the company's then-record high stock price was unjustified but she did not at that point suspect fraud at Enron. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. Actually, no. At least 1 in 303 residents have died from the coronavirus, a total of 2,512 deaths. MCHD offers free COVID-19 (PCR) testing every Tuesday and Wednesday from 9am-12pm inside the McLean County Health Department building, 200 W. Front Street in downtown Bloomington, Room 400E. Coronavirus outbreaks were reported by the Merced County Department of Public Health at New Bethany Residential Care retirement home in Los Banos and Dutch Bros Coffee. [16] McLean resides in Chicago with her children. Vanity Fair may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The fracking boom that drove a decade of record U.S. oil and gas production was never really profitable to begin with. This kind of rewrites the economics of oil trading.. All that's left to tally is the damage. In early 2015, the hedge fund manager David Einhorn announced at an investment conference that he had looked at the financial statements of 16 publicly traded shale producers and found that from 2006 to 2014, they spent $80 billion more than they received from selling oil. (Many of the companies owned by mammoth private-equity firms like Blackstone are too big on their own to qualify for this bucket of money.). In the five years ending in April, there were 215 bankruptcies for oil and gas companies, involving $130 billion in debt, according to the law firm Haynes and Boone. Joe Nocera is a journalist and column writer for Dealbook. The Next Financial Crisis Lurks Underground (Bethany McLean, New York Times), Coronavirus May Kill Our Fracking Fever Dream (Bethany McLean, New York Times), Are Crude Oil & Natural Gas Prices Linked? This week, Kate and Daniel talk to Bethany McLean, author most recently of Saudi America: The Truth about Fracking and How It's Changing the World as well as the bestselling The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron, with Peter Elkind. Private equity, of course, came of age in the 1980s, when greed was good and private-equity titans like KKRs Henry Kravis first burst into the limelight by taking over famed American manufacturers like RJR Nabisco. Best-selling author Bethany McLean reveals the true story of fracking's impact - on Wall Street, the economy, and geopolitics. Monday - Friday Tar Heel, North Carolina, United States. The title and release date have not yet been determined. On March 10, the company announced that it would slash its dividend for the first time since the early 1990s, when Saddam Husseins invasion of Kuwait sent oil prices plummeting. Ad Choices. Bethany McLean is a Vanity Fair contributing editor. The book was later made into the Academy Award-nominated documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Some of it may be on bank balance sheets. NEW YORK Business writers Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera are collaborating on a critical take of the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic. (Adila Mchich, CME Group), Fractivism: Corporate Bodies and Chemical Bonds (Sarah Ann Wylie), The Fracktivists (Colin Kinniburgh, Dissent), Kate: A Moderate Proposal: Nationalize The Fossil Fuel Industry (The New Republic), This week, Kate and Daniel talk to Bethany McLean, author most recently of, Saudi America: The Truth about Fracking and How Its Changing the World, The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron, If you like the episode and want to hear more, sign up as a monthly member at. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories. It is absolutely imperative, Waters recently wrote in support of private equity, that the reliefbe extended to protect all workers, irrespective of the affiliations of their employers. Translation: Workers shouldnt suffer just because their bosses sold a controlling stake in their businesses to a bunch of greedy fat cats. NEW YORK Business writers Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera are collaborating on a critical take of the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic. McLean is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and co-author of the Enron book The Smartest Guys in the Room. Nocera is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and co-author of Indentured, about the NCAA. January 2022 was the month with the highest average cases, while November 2020 was the month with the highest . One is the so-called Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), set up to make $349 billion in government-guaranteed loans available to businesses with fewer than 500 employees. Its essential that we do the same today. Nocera is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and co-author of Indentured, about the NCAA. No food or drink for one hour prior to testing. She has co-authored multiple bestselling books, including The Smartest Guys in the Room and All the Devils Are Here. Ad Choices. New revelations about how one Trump staffer helped preserve the transfer of powerfrom the forthcoming book on the Biden White House, COVID-19 Origins: Investigating a Complex and Grave Situation Inside a Wuhan Lab. Americas energy independence was an illusion created by cheap debt. By early 2019, America was the worlds largest producer of crude oil, surpassing both Saudi Arabia and Russia. in English and mathematics from Williams College. 8:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. 200 W Front StreetBloomington, IL 61701Phone: (309) 888-5450 HoursMonday - Friday8 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. - Manage notification subscriptions, save form progress and more. Airlines, hotels, and restaurantsall of whose revenues have cratered in the wake of sweeping stay-home ordershave engaged in Hunger Gameslike lobbying to cash in on the CARES Act, making their case for a share of the disaster relief. In a January 4 opinion piece for the New York Times, Bethany McLean had this to say about the outcome of the Elizabeth Holmes trial: "A jury's verdict is black-and-white, but the real story is . A loophole in the tax code currently allows private-equity financiers to pay taxes on their returns at the lower rate for capital gains, rather than the higher rate for personal income. 2023 Cond Nast. According to the Institutional Limited Partners Association. on March 2.Read more about the C.D.C . Bethany McLean is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the author of "Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It's Changing the World." The Power Law Venture Capital and the . Even before the COVID crisis, there were questions about how well private-equity investments were actually performing. Bethany College will continue to adapt and collaborate as needed to encourage vaccines and boosters for staff and students. By Bess Levin . (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer), (Rick Bowmer, Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. Hot & Bothered is produced by Colin Kinniburgh. Are Crude Oil & Natural Gas Prices Linked? But among those angling for a federal handout is one of the wealthiest sectors of the American economy: private equity. Even as the public equity and debt markets grew cautious, drilling continued. From 2015 through 2019, private equity firms raised almost $80 billion in funds focused mostly on shale production, according to Barclays. The SHIELD saliva-based testing is available for all ages. She is the co-author of the 2003 book, "The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron," which was the basis for the Academy Award-nominated documentary of the same name. Beleaguered pension funds, which suffered big losses in the financial crisis, could no longer count on decent returns from fixed investments, given how low interest rates have been kept by the Fed. McLean started her career as an investment banking analyst for Goldman Sachs[2] and joined Vanity Fair as a contributing editor in 2008. The industrys $1.5 trillion in cash on hand is also the highest on recordand more than double what it was five years ago, according to Preqin. On March 9, the price of oil plunged by almost a third, its steepest one-day drop in almost 30 years. She is a writer, known for Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005), Independent Lens (1999) and PBS NewsHour (1975). We asked three experts two immunologists and an epidemiologist to weigh in on this and some of the hundreds of other, Thats a difficult question to answer definitely, writes the Opinion columnist Zeynep Tufekci, because of the lack of. By now, it should be abundantly clear that the current shale oil business model does not work even for the very best companies in the industry, the investment firm SailingStone Capital Partners explained in a recent note. This week, Ms. McLean begins promoting her new book, "All the Devils are Here," about the current financial crisis. He and McLean previously worked together on All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis, about the 2008 market crash. All thats left to tally is the damage. [citation needed] She began as a contributor to Slate's Moneybox column, in 2010 and "The Bulldog" column in Fortune. Given how much of the economy will rise and fall on the investments that private-equity funds manage, we may be forced to let them share the federal handout. In 2019, the American Investment Council (AIC), a lobbying group which represents private-equity giants like Blackstone, the Carlyle Group, Apollo Global Management, and KKR, declared that in order to continue to provide the benefits they guarantee, pensions must continue to invest in private equity.. She is also a columnist at Yahoo Finance and a contributor to CNBC. 1 FOR PHARMACISTS PRESCRIBING PAXLOVID: This service is available in all locations, with the exception of those in New Hampshire. David Wallace Wells writes that by one estimate, 100,000 Americans could die each yearfrom the coronavirus. The big banks emerged from the financial crisis victorious, but also subject to a host of new regulations designed to reduce leverage and stabilize the economy. Following the trail of evidence, Louisiana Senator: Our Maternal Death Rates Are Only Bad If You Count Black Women, If you correct our population for race, were not as much of an outlier as itdotherwise appear.. Energy independence was a fever dream, fed by cheap debt and frothy capital markets. When will the pandemic end? (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer), Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. [12], McLean married Chris Wilford in 2000 and divorced in 2006. In the Season One finale of Making A Killing, Bethany brings back her friend, colleague and co-author Joe Nocera (Bloomberg Opinion columnist and creator of The Shrink Next Door podcast) to bookend the season with a lively analysis of the former head of Nissan Motor Co. and Renault S.A., Carlos Ghosn. The Wuhan Institute of Virology, the cutting-edge . 500 energy sector fell 20 percent, marking the sectors largest drop on record. McLean is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and co-author of the Enron book The Smartest Guys in the Room. The basic reason is that the amount of oil coming out of a fracked well declines steeply after the first year more than 50 percent in year two. Investors in the equity of these companies have already seen the value of their holdings decimated. McLean is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and co-author of the Enron book "The Smartest Guys in the Room." Nocera. What could endemic Covid look like? Sign up for our daily Hive newsletter and never miss a story. Previous to her current roles, McLean was an editor-at-large at Fortune Magazine. Some of it has been packaged into so-called collateralized loan obligations, pieces of which are held by hedge funds. The allies of private equity hope that similar exemptions will soon be forthcoming for their firms.We are in a wait-and-see mode, Chris Hayes, the ILPAs senior policy counsel, told me. All rights reserved). And North American oil and gas drillers have almost $100 billion of debt that is set to mature in the next four years. But with super-low interest rates, investors in search of yield were still willing to buy debt. Thanks to the $2 trillion bipartisan bailout bill, the industrys coronavirus losses will belong to all of us. All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis is a nonfiction book by authors Bethany McLean and Joseph Nocera about the 2008 financial crisis. "Dow 36,000" co-authors stand by book's premise. Thats a difficult question to answer definitely, writes the Opinion columnist Zeynep Tufekci, because of the lack of adequate research and support for sufferers, as well as confusion about what the condition even is. By Patrick Semansky/AP Photo (Mnuchin); By Mark Wilson (Pelosi), Jason Alden (Shwarzman), Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg (Black), by Johannes EISELE/AFP (stocks), by Christina Horsten (tents), by John Nacion (ambulance); All from Getty Images. There are several pots of federal money that the private-equity industry is lobbying to access. Exclusive: Inside the S--tshow That Was the Trump-Biden Transition. Dec 2020 - Apr 20221 year 5 months. Has its bubble finally burst? Bethany McLean is a Vanity Fair contributing editor. Ever since Congress voted to hand out $2 trillion in taxpayer money to those hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic, American businesses have been scrambling for a piece of the action. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous . The taxpayer handouts will also help private equity continue its relentless march through the global economy, snapping up troubled companies at bargain prices or extending high-priced credit as other investors, including hedge funds, are forced to sell off their holdings in the post-corona landscape.