Ms. McLean is the author of Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How Its Changing the World., Ever since the oil shocks of the 1970s, the idea of energy independence, which in its grandest incarnation meant freedom from the worlds oil-rich trouble spots, has been a dream for Democrats and Republicans alike. When will the pandemic end? Whiting Petroleum, whose stock once traded for $150 a share, filed for bankruptcy. Elizabeth Holmes Was Found Guilty, But Was She Fundamentally - Forbes And President Trump reveled in the rhetoric: We hadnt merely achieved independence, his administration said, but rather energy dominance.. COVID-19 Origins: Investigating a "Complex and Grave Situation" Inside a Wuhan Lab. 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. This kind of rewrites the economics of oil trading.. Contents 1 Early life and education 2 Career Check out the full Hot & Bothered archive here. 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. Sign up for our daily Hive newsletter and never miss a story. Everything You Know About Martin Shkreli Is Wrongor Is It? [16] McLean resides in Chicago with her children. 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. 500 energy sector fell, questions weve gathered from readers recently, adequate research and support for sufferers, according to the law firm Haynes and Boone. According to the Institutional Limited Partners Association. Vanity Fair may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. McLean is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and co-author of the Enron book The Smartest Guys in the Room. 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. The value of West Texas Intermediate crude, a U.S. benchmark, dipped below zero for a few hourstrading as low as negative $40 a barrel. Hot & Bothered is produced by Colin Kinniburgh. Looking for more? The title and release date have not yet been determined. Bethany McLean. The book was later made into the Academy Award-nominated documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. The reason is as simple as it is galling: while great private fortunes, such as that of Blackstones Stephen Schwarzman (net worth: $17.5 billion and Apollos Leon Black ($7.5 billion), have been made from private equitys march through the world, its losses, to a remarkable degree, will belong to all of us. There are several pots of federal money that the private-equity industry is lobbying to access. 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. By early 2019, America was the worlds largest producer of crude oil, surpassing both Saudi Arabia and Russia. Restaurants and hotels owned by big chains have already received exemptions granting them access to the relief funds, regardless of how many people their parent companies employ. And why not? Unfortunately, there isnt really an alternative to providing private equity with federal funds. And North American oil and gas drillers have almost $100 billion of debt that is set to mature in the next four years. 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. Bethany McLean is a . A hydraulic fracturing site in Denton, Texas. Exclusive: Inside the S--tshow That Was the Trump-Biden Transition. What could endemic Covid look like? 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. Thanks to the $2 trillion bipartisan bailout bill, the industrys coronavirus losses will belong to all of us. The title and release date have not yet been determined. FILE - In this Friday, June 12, 2020 file photo, a nurse uses a swab to perform a coronavirus test in Salt Lake City. McLean was born in Hibbing, Minnesota on December 12, 1970. Even as the public equity and debt markets grew cautious, drilling continued. 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. Get COVID-19 vaccine updates from the CDC. TDD: (800) 526-0844 Bethany McLean is a Vanity Fair contributing editor. How Screwed Are Donald Trump and His Adult Children, and Other Questions You Might Have About the Staggering Fraud Lawsuit Against Them. 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. McLean is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and co-author of the Enron book The Smartest Guys in the Room. Think of private-equity firms as the banks of the corona crisis: They are, for better or worse, too big to fail. He and McLean previously worked together on All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis, about the 2008 market crash. The industrys lack of profits wasnt exactly a secret. In reality, the dream was always an illusion, and its collapse was already underway. 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. "Dow 36,000" co-authors stand by book's premise. 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 as well as the bestselling The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron, with Peter Elkind. What the Theranos trial says about the blurred lines between visionaries and frauds. The fracking boom that drove a decade of record U.S. oil and gas production was never really profitable to begin with. As for Pelosi, she doesnt want to see companies backed by venture capital excluded from federal relief, given her Silicon Valley constituents. It once seemed utterly unattainable until the advent of fracking, which unleashed a torrent of oil. Copyright 2023 WSLS.com is managed by Graham Digital and published by Graham Media Group, a division of Graham Holdings. As a result, private equity is now wound into the very fabric of our economy. Even so, he told me, a large number of private-equity firms ignored that guidance and decided to put very high levels of leverage on their portfolio companies. Maybe those firms should now be required to contribute more equity from their cash stockpiles, he suggests. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Tar Heel, North Carolina, United States. 1 FOR PHARMACISTS PRESCRIBING PAXLOVID: This service is available in all locations, with the exception of those in New Hampshire. According to the Institutional Limited Partners Association (ILPA), a lobbying group which represents CalPERs and other public investors, businesses backed by private equity employ more than 8.8 million Americans at over 35,000 companies, accounting for a staggering 5% of the United States GDP. On Thursday's show: The job forecast for the region in 2022, lessons from the collapse of Enron, a conversation with the late Stephen Sondheim, and the best new restaurants from the past year. In April, the Energy Information Administration cut its forecast for U.S. oil production, estimating that it will fall both this year and next suggesting that the days of huge growth in production from shale are over. But among those angling for a federal handout is one of the wealthiest sectors of the American economy: private equity. She is also a columnist at Yahoo Finance and a contributor to CNBC. 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.. Was Tiffany involved? College student found dead in her dorm after testing positive for 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.. Private equity financiers typically get a 2 percent management fee on funds they can raise, so they are incentivized to take all the money that pension funds, desperate for returns to shore up their promises to retirees, have been willing to give them. 500 energy sector fell 20 percent, marking the sectors largest drop on record. Actually, no. [7][8] The Washington Post selected it as one of the best nonfiction books of 2015. We could close that, once and for all. Bethany McLean Latest Articles | Vanity Fair Private equity has made multibillionaires of executives like Blackstones Steve Schwarzman (net worth: $17.5 billion) and Apollos Leon Black ($7.5 billion). Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. The politics dictating whether the private-equity industry will get its wishes are surprising. In 2019, Oxy, as its known, topped a competing bid from Chevron and paid $38 billion to take over Anadarko Petroleum, which is one of the major shale companies. We asked three experts two immunologists and an epidemiologist to weigh in on this and some of the hundreds of other questions weve gathered from readers recently, including how to make sense of booster and test timing, recommendations for children, whether getting covid is just inevitable and other pressing queries. Unlike venture capitalists, who provide start-up funds to new companies, private-equity firms generally take over existing businesses, usually by borrowing large sums of money. This location, as with the other County contracted medical sheltering sites, will accept individuals from the local community that are referred through DPH. The promised profits havent materialized. Veuer's Tony Spitz has the details. (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.). Its thanks to those who are able to contribute that were able to make the podcast free for anyone to listen to. One of the key principles behind private equity is that increased leverageaka more debtcan make a business function more efficiently.