Bethany McLean (@bethanymac12), author and journalist, joins Julia La Roche on episode 66 to revisit some notorious corporate failures and discuss fraud. Bethany is the author of The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron and All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis. She has also written two mini books, Shaky Ground: The Strange Saga of the US Mortgage Giants and Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It's Changing the World.
She also serves on the board of the Stigler Center at the University of Chicago. She's a 1992 graduate of Williams College.
0:00 Background and path to journalism
1:47 Goldman Sachs to fact-checking at Fortune
4:15 Writing about investing
5:45 Another side to stories
6:37 Enron
9:20 Reporting the Enron story
14:45 Lessons from Enron
15:20 Do you own homework
18:00 Emotion in business
20:00 Short-selling
23:11 Do your own homework
24:19 Valeant stock battle
26:10 Legal fraud
30:38 A thin line between a fraudster and a visionary
33:15 World of business is crazier than ever before
37:45 Golden age of fraud?
41:03 Venture capital and private equity’s reliance on low-interest rates
43:43 A different environment
44:44 Curiosity covering corporate failures
47:00 Can greed be eliminated?
48:48 Banking crisis
49:55 State of journalism
