bethany mclean coronavirus

As a result, private equity is now wound into the very fabric of our economy. McLean was born in Hibbing, Minnesota on December 12, 1970. As a result, the stocks that make up the S.&P. Smithfield Foods. Even before the coronavirus crisis, the spigot was drying up. 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. FILE - In this Friday, June 12, 2020 file photo, a nurse uses a swab to perform a coronavirus test in Salt Lake City. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories. 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 English and mathematics from Williams College. More than 100,000 people already have died in this country from the virus. 2023 Cond Nast. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. on March 2.Read more about the C.D.C . Hot & Bothered is produced by Colin Kinniburgh. On the surface, it appears that two unforeseeable and random shocks are threatening our dream. Driven partly by public pensions, the private-equity industry has mushroomed. Blackstones Schwarzman has ties to Trump. Create a Website Account - Manage notification subscriptions, save form progress and more. Otherwise, the ILPA warned in a previous letter, there would be significant harm not only to employees that see their hours reduced or jobs eliminated, but also significantly reduced returns to the institutions providing retirement security through pensions, insurance policies and other investments that serve hundreds of thousands of Americans. To make matters worse, ILPA added, provisions in many private-equity investments allow private-equity firms to make additional capital calls when times are tough. We need private equity, we need more of it, and we need it now, chief investment officer Ben Meng said in early 2019right before CalPERS hired a former private-equity guy, who began his career at Goldman Sachs, to head its private-equity efforts. McLean is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and co-author of the Enron book The Smartest Guys in the Room. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer), (Rick Bowmer, Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. Fueled by debt and years of easy credit, Americas energy boom is on shaky footing. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com. As a result, fracking stocks badly underperformed the market. All rights reserved. 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. If you need help with the Public File, call (713) 778-4745. [citation needed] She began as a contributor to Slate's Moneybox column, in 2010 and "The Bulldog" column in Fortune. 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. All thats left to tally is the environmental and financial damage. NEW YORK Business writers Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera are collaborating on a critical take of the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic. The key issue is the parent child problem. When wells are clustered tightly together, with so-called child wells drilled around the parent, the wells interfere with one another, resulting in less oil, not more. A hydraulic fracturing site in Denton, Texas. Never mind that they often overpaid for the companies they acquired, and loaded them up with so much debt that even a mild economic downturn could make it nearly impossible for those companies to repay their loans, as Fortune put it. This is late 80s bad, a close observer of the industry says. In the Haynesville and the Utica Shales, two major natural gas plays, over half of the drilling is being done by private equity-backed companies; in the oil-rich Permian Basin, its about a quarter of the drilling. Is there any chance this could lead to prison time? Its still unclear where most of this debt is held. [13][14][15] They divorced in 2020. More than 100,000 people already have died in this country from the virus. 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 has made multibillionaires of executives like Blackstones Steve Schwarzman (net worth: $17.5 billion) and Apollos Leon Black ($7.5 billion). The Wuhan Institute of Virology, the cutting-edge biotech facility at the center of swirling suspicions about the pandemics onset, was far more troubled than previously known, explosive documents unearthed by a Senate research team reveal. Well continue to work with the administration and Congress to request that federal programs support all businesses, regardless of ownership structure, and their workers, says the AICs CEO, Drew Maloney. She resides in Chicago with her children. 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. The typical fee structure in private equity is the so-called 2 and 20, which means that a fund collects a fee of 2% of the total assets it manages, as well as 20% of any gains on its investments after a certain return is achieved. Previous to her current roles, McLean was an editor-at-large at Fortune Magazine. Has its bubble finally burst? The book, which she wrote from the couple's home, puts a human face to the crisis. One of the key principles behind private equity is that increased leverageaka more debtcan make a business function more efficiently. . 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. Copyright 2023 WSLS.com is managed by Graham Digital and published by Graham Media Group, a division of Graham Holdings. At least 1 in 303 residents have died from the coronavirus, a total of 2,512 deaths. How Screwed Are Donald Trump and His Adult Children, and Other Questions You Might Have About the Staggering Fraud Lawsuit Against Them. The problem is, existing rules at the Small Business Administration, which is overseeing the program, have been widely interpretedas excludingloaning money to most mom-and-pop businesses that are controlled by large parent companiesincluding private-equity firms. 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. 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. And North American oil and gas drillers have almost $100 billion of debt that is set to mature in the next four years. On March 9, the price of oil plunged by almost a third, its steepest one-day drop in almost 30 years. Like the big banks in 2008, private equity is holding us all hostage. By signing up you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. According to the Institutional Limited Partners Association. Fracking, they said, was just manufacturing, in which process and human intelligence could reduce costs and conquer geology. Joe Nocera is a journalist and column writer for Dealbook. Paying members will get access to perks like a. by Kate Aronoff, Alyssa Battistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen, and Thea Riofrancos, and much more. And President Trump reveled in the rhetoric: We hadnt merely achieved independence, his administration said, but rather energy dominance.. The technology of fracking in shale rock - particularly in the Permian Basin in Texas - has transformed America into the world's top producer of both oil and natural gas. Over the past 10 years, the entire energy industry has issued over $400 billion in high-yield debt. Blame Congress for the meltdown, not Goldman Sachs. The private-equity industry also wants the companies they have invested in to have access to the $454 billion being doled out through the Treasury, an amount that the Fed said could be leveraged into over $2 trillion. The total number of . The active outbreak list is intended to inform the public of the current COVID-19 outbreaks in Los Angeles County. She is known for her writing on the Enron scandal and the 2008 financial crisis. By Bethany McLean Coronavirus May Kill Our Fracking Fever Dream America's energy independence was an illusion created by cheap debt. governor announced on Tuesday that he will convene a grand jury to investigate "crimes and wrongdoing" related to COVID-19 vaccines. But among those angling for a federal handout is one of the wealthiest sectors of the American economy: private equity. Because rules for access to this money werent specified in the CARES Act, as ILPA notes, the executive branch will have a fair amount of discretion over who gets access to the moneyand private-equity firms want to take full advantage of that opening. Getting the government out of the housing market would mean saying goodbye to the 30-year mortgage. NEW YORK (AP) Business writers Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera are collaborating on a critical take of the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic. She has co-authored multiple bestselling books, including The Smartest Guys in the Room and All the Devils Are Here. Contents 1 Early life and education 2 Career 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. 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. Whiting Petroleum, whose stock once traded for $150 a share, filed for bankruptcy. How exactly did the alleged illegal activity go down? Yet an exemption for the private-equity industry did not make its way into the CARES Act; according to Bloomberg, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is trying to pass a $250 billion boost to the PPPwithout provisions opening it to private-equity-backed companies. COVID-19 Origins: Investigating a "Complex and Grave Situation" Inside a Wuhan Lab. (This may not surprise anyone who is attempting to be productive while working in close quarters with their children.). Writer: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. In reality, the dream was always an illusion, and its collapse was already underway. We could close that, once and for all. Bethany Lee McLean (born December 12, 1970) is an American journalist and contributing editor for Vanity Fair magazine. Occidental is just one piece of the puzzle. The Wuhan Institute of Virology, the cutting-edge . 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 fear, of course, is that private equity will do what private equity does best, which is pocket the money themselves rather than devoting it to the businesses theyve invested in. Pension funds that have poured money into private equity firms may take a hit soon, too. The Wuhan Institute of Virology, the cutting-edge . COVID-19 Origins: Investigating a "Complex and Grave Situation" Inside a Wuhan Lab. But that didnt seem to matter, because low interest rates facilitated private equity in another way. Nocera is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and co-author of Indentured, about the NCAA. There are several pots of federal money that the private-equity industry is lobbying to access. The fracking boom that drove a decade of record U.S. oil and gas production was never really profitable to begin with. "Dow 36,000" co-authors stand by book's premise. Are Crude Oil & Natural Gas Prices Linked? She has been married to Sean Murray Berkowitz since May 2008. In September 2015, she published Shaky Ground: The Strange Saga of the U.S. Mortgage Giants which examines the governance and financial situation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac seven years after the 2008 financial crisis. Clients who show symptoms of COVID-19 (for example have a fever, cough, or difficulty breathing) and/or are waiting for their test results. These cookies are used to collect information on how users interact with Chicago Booth websites allowing us to improve the user experience and optimize our site where needed based on these interactions. 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. 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. 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. As for Pelosi, she doesnt want to see companies backed by venture capital excluded from federal relief, given her Silicon Valley constituents. How concerning are things like long covid and reinfections? By Bethany McLean. Dont hesitate: sign up on Patreon today. Some of it may be on bank balance sheets. Moodys, the rating agency, said that in the third quarter of 2019, 91 percent of defaulted U.S. corporate debt was due to oil and gas companies. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. David Wallace Wells writes that by one estimate, 100,000 Americans could die each yearfrom the coronavirus. 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 . But with super-low interest rates, investors in search of yield were still willing to buy debt. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Bethany McLean is a Vanity Fair contributing editor. Check out the full Hot & Bothered archive here. Monday - Friday 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. And why not? Stopping that will require a creative effort to increase and sustain high levels of vaccination. Copyright 2023 WSLS.com is managed by Graham Digital and published by Graham Media Group, a division of Graham Holdings. Private-equity managers won the financial crisis, as Bloomberg put it last fall. Its thanks to those who are able to contribute that were able to make the podcast free for anyone to listen to. (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.). 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. Latest trends. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. It once seemed utterly unattainable until the advent of fracking, which unleashed a torrent of oil. Bethany McLean is a Vanity Fair contributing editor. 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. According to Dan Rasmussen, the founder of Verdad Advisers, private-equity firms typically double the amount of debt relative to profits on a companys balance sheet. James Glassman says his seven-year-old prediction that the Dow Jones industrial average will rise to 36,000 wasn't wrong, just early. The man who shot his girlfriend and five relatives at a birthday celebration had "control issues". [citation needed], She authored an article on Enron for the March 5, 2001, issue of Fortune entitled, "Is Enron Overpriced? The 42 Best Romantic Comedies of All Time, The 25 Best Shows on Netflix to Watch Right Now. Music: Mercurias Meet Victor Rice, Carregar (Instrumental), courtesy of Total Running Time. But there are ways to make it work better. Even as the public equity and debt markets grew cautious, drilling continued. This location, as with the other County contracted medical sheltering sites, will accept individuals from the local community that are referred through DPH. 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. Its essential that we do the same today. 2023 Cond Nast. [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. 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. Looking for more? TDD: (800) 526-0844 She was previously married to Christopher Roberts Wilford. To keep growing, companies have to keep plowing billions back into the ground. 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.. Daily updates from Washington, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley. The book was later made into the Academy Award-nominated documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. All thats left to tally is the damage. The immunobiologist Akiko Iwasakiwrites that new vaccines, particular those delivered through the nose, may be part of the answer. Almost everything thats happened since 2008 has tilted in their favor. Increasingly desperate to boost the portfolios of retiring workers, they too turned to private equity as their saviorurged on by private equitys promises that it alone could deliver the necessary returns. In each of the past four years, according to data-provider Preqin, private-capital managers raised over $500 billion of new money to invest. 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. Energy independence was a fever dream, fed by cheap debt and frothy capital markets. 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? A deal, and higher oil prices, might help the industry. Investors were willing to do this only as long as oil prices, which are not under Americas control, were high and when they believed that one day, profits would materialize. Mortgages should be used to buy homes, not for refinancing. 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. The Next Financial Crisis Lurks Underground, Coronavirus May Kill Our Fracking Fever Dream. More than 100,000 people already have died in this country from the virus. He and McLean previously worked together on All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis, about the 2008 market crash. "[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. Americas energy independence was an illusion created by cheap debt. All we know for sure is that fracking company executives and private equity financiers have made a fortune by touting the myth of energy independence and they wont be the ones who have to pick up the pieces., Bethany McLean, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, is the author of Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How Its Changing the World.. Seventy-one members of the Bethany Slavic Missionary Church near Rancho Cordova or people associated with congregation members have been afflicted with the virus, county officials say, making. Recent and archived work by Bethany McLean for The New York Times. 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. 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. Get COVID-19 vaccine updates from the CDC. We could also limit the deductibility of interest payments for tax purposes even more than President Donald Trumps new tax law already did, so companies arent encouraged to load up on debt. 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. The fracking boom that drove a decade of record U.S. oil and gas production was never really profitable to begin with. Bethany McLean was born on 12 December 1970 in Hibbing, Minnesota, USA. McLean is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and co-author of the Enron book The Smartest Guys in the Room. 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.. You can see how all of this is playing out by looking at Occidental Petroleum. COVID-19 in McLean County for the week ending 3-3-23 - New Cases (2-23-23 to 3-1-23):129; New Hospitalizations (2-22-23 to 2-28-23):10 ; McLean Countys COVID-19 Community Level is LOW: When Community Level is LOW: Stay up to date on vaccinations, Get tested if you have symptoms. Thanks to the $2 trillion bipartisan bailout bill, the industrys coronavirus losses will belong to all of us. On the other hand, Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and powerful Representative Maxine Waters, have weighed in loudlyon the industrys behalf. Nocera and McLean writing book on U.S. coronavirus response By The Associated Press June 24, 2020 NEW YORK (AP) Business writers Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera are collaborating on a critical take of the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic. 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 Vanity Fair contributing editor. What the Theranos trial says about the blurred lines between visionaries and frauds. 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. McLean graduated from Hibbing High School in 1988. 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. Fractivism: Corporate Bodies and Chemical Bonds, A Moderate Proposal: Nationalize The Fossil Fuel Industry, https://media.blubrry.com/belabored/dissentmagazine.org/mp3/24HotBothered.mp3. After nearly bringing down the economy in 2008, how is it possible that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are still around? [12], McLean married Chris Wilford in 2000 and divorced in 2006. Novavax Inc said on Thursday it would require six months to produce a COVID-19 vaccine designed to match whichever coronavirus variants are circulating for an annual immunization program each fall . The man who shot his girlfriend and five relatives at a birthday celebration had "control issues". The SHIELD saliva-based testing is available for all ages. The community level of Covid-19 in McLean County is low based on cases and hospitalizations, according to the most recent update from the C.D.C. 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. sure to go down in history as one of the wildest business stories ever. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous . 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. Has its bubble finally burst? 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.

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