Bethany McLean is a Vanity Fair contributing editor. Its thanks to those who are able to contribute that were able to make the podcast free for anyone to listen to. Music: Mercurias Meet Victor Rice, Carregar (Instrumental), courtesy of Total Running Time. Paying members will get access to perks like a. by Kate Aronoff, Alyssa Battistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen, and Thea Riofrancos, and much more. 500 energy sector fell 20 percent, marking the sectors largest drop on record. Bethany McLean is a Vanity Fair contributing editor. The promised profits havent materialized. 500 energy sector fell, questions weve gathered from readers recently, adequate research and support for sufferers, according to the law firm Haynes and Boone. Bethany McLean is a journalist and contributing editor for Vanity Fair. FILE - In this Friday, June 12, 2020 file photo, a nurse uses a swab to perform a coronavirus test in Salt Lake City. 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 fracking boom that drove a decade of record U.S. oil and gas production was never really profitable to begin with. Smithfield Foods. 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. By early 2019, America was the worlds largest producer of crude oil, surpassing both Saudi Arabia and Russia. 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. 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. A journalist profiles the developers and devotees who have aided the rise of cybercurrency. More than 100,000 people already have died in this country from the virus. A deal, and higher oil prices, might help the industry. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. Veuer's Tony Spitz has the details. How concerning are things like long covid and reinfections? Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. By Bethany McLean. The book was later made into the Academy Award-nominated documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. The man who shot his girlfriend and five relatives at a birthday celebration had "control issues". Previous to her current roles, McLean was an editor-at-large at Fortune Magazine. 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 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. Confirmed case data are from the Department of Public Health's communicable disease surveillance database. (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.). Are Crude Oil & Natural Gas Prices Linked? Bethany McLean. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. 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. [13][14][15] They divorced in 2020. McLean is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and co-author of the Enron book "The Smartest Guys in the Room." Nocera. On the surface, it appears that two unforeseeable and random shocks are threatening our dream. The politics dictating whether the private-equity industry will get its wishes are surprising. Fueled by debt and years of easy credit, Americas energy boom is on shaky footing. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer), Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. Whiting Petroleum, whose stock once traded for $150 a share, filed for bankruptcy. If you like the episode and want to hear more, sign up as a monthly member at patreon.com/hotbotheredclimate 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. 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. On March 10, Scott Sheffield, the chief executive of Pioneer Natural Resources, a major driller in the Permian Basin, told Bloomberg that U.S. oil output could fall by more than two million barrels per day by next year if prices remain where they are today. 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.. On April 20, oil prices did something theyve never done before. How Screwed Are Donald Trump and His Adult Children, and Other Questions You Might Have About the Staggering Fraud Lawsuit Against Them. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer), (Rick Bowmer, Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. [1] In 1992 she received a B.A. But with super-low interest rates, investors in search of yield were still willing to buy debt. 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. 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. 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. Confirmed cases include those reported since the beginning of the current active outbreak and may include cases that . Writer: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. By Bess Levin . You can see how all of this is playing out by looking at Occidental Petroleum. (And not all private-equity firms care equally about all of the programs.) Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Not only should taxpayer funds not be used to pay management or consulting firms, she says, but companies that take the money should also, for instance, be required to include workers on their corporate boards and gradually increase their minimum wage to at least $15 an hour. McLean was born in Hibbing, Minnesota on December 12, 1970. The title and release date have not yet been determined. When will the pandemic end? NEW YORK Business writers Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera are collaborating on a critical take of the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic. Since that time, Oxys stock has plummeted almost 80 percent in part due to fears that the Anadarko acquisition is going to prove so wildly unprofitable that it sinks the company. The immunobiologist Akiko Iwasakiwrites that new vaccines, particular those delivered through the nose, may be part of the answer. She has suggestions for how to approach the problem. On March 9, the price of oil plunged by almost a third, its steepest one-day drop in almost 30 years. 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. 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. According to the CARES Act, companies can only receive loans from the Small Business Administration if they commit to preserving jobs. 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. 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. 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. And more! 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. 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. 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. 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. Dont hesitate: sign up on Patreon today. Looking for more? Tens of thousands of Texans are being laid off in the Permian Basin and other parts of the state, and the whole industry is bracing for worse. Pension funds that have poured money into private equity firms may take a hit soon, too. What could endemic Covid look like? As a group of scientists who study virusesexplains, Theres no reason, at least biologically, that the virus wont continue to evolve.From a different angle, the science writer David Quammen surveys some of the highly effective tools and techniques that are now available for studying Covid and other viruses, but notes that such knowledge alone wont blunt the danger. In each of the past four years, according to data-provider Preqin, private-capital managers raised over $500 billion of new money to invest. 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. 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. The SHIELD saliva-based testing is available for all ages. NEW YORK Business writers Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera are collaborating on a critical take of the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic. Sign up for our daily Hive newsletter and never miss a story. The book, which she wrote from the couple's home, puts a human face to the crisis. Its a rich history of a company, and a case study in how a corporate culture can turn toxic. He and McLean previously worked together on All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis, about the 2008 market crash. More than 100,000 people already have died in this country from the virus. Energy independence was a fever dream, fed by cheap debt and frothy capital markets. Rasmussen points out that after the financial crisis in 2008, the Federal Reserve set a limit on the amount of debt it considered prudent. McLean graduated from Hibbing High School in 1988. Even before the COVID crisis, there were questions about how well private-equity investments were actually performing. BLOOMINGTON A total of 208 new COVID-19 cases have been reported by the McLean County Health Department from Jan. 27 through Friday. Thats because some of the major investors in private-equity funds are public pension plans; at Blackstone, roughly one-third of the firms money comes from retirement plans set up to provide for over 30 million working-class Americans, according to someone with knowledge of its portfolio. How exactly did the alleged illegal activity go down? 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. And North American oil and gas drillers have almost $100 billion of debt that is set to mature in the next four years. She has been married to Sean Murray Berkowitz since May 2008. This is late 80s bad, a close observer of the industry says. A hydraulic fracturing site in Denton, Texas. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. in English and mathematics from Williams College. Colombias Amazing Race to Build a $1,000 Ventilator Frontline Doctors Race to Learn the Mysteries of Coronavirus How Dr. Anthony Faucis Media Strategy Is Revolutionizing Coronavirus Messaging Can Americas Crowd-Driven Spectacles Return for the Fall Season? From the Archive: Following the Psychological Contagion That Fed the 2014 Ebola Outbreak. So why should they be permitted to raid the federal Treasury in a time of crisis? 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. 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. "Dow 36,000" co-authors stand by book's premise. Latest trends. It once seemed utterly unattainable until the advent of fracking, which unleashed a torrent of oil. NEW YORK Business writers Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera are collaborating on a critical take of the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic. 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. 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. McLean is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and co-author of the Enron book The Smartest Guys in the Room.
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