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More than 100,000 people already have died in this country from the virus. (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. 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. Elizabeth Holmes Was Found Guilty, But Was She Fundamentally - Forbes By early 2019, America was the worlds largest producer of crude oil, surpassing both Saudi Arabia and Russia. Thats because one big source of funding didnt dry up: private equity. 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. Latest trends. 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. Music: Mercurias Meet Victor Rice, Carregar (Instrumental), courtesy of Total Running Time. 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.. The promised profits havent materialized. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer), (Rick Bowmer, Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. governor announced on Tuesday that he will convene a grand jury to investigate "crimes and wrongdoing" related to COVID-19 vaccines. 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. Too Big to Fail, COVID-19 Edition: How Private Equity Is Winning the Copyright 2023 Click2Houston.com is managed by Graham Digital and published by Graham Media Group, a division of Graham Holdings. 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. Even as the public equity and debt markets grew cautious, drilling continued. 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. Mortgages should be used to buy homes, not for refinancing. 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. BLOOMINGTON A total of 208 new COVID-19 cases have been reported by the McLean County Health Department from Jan. 27 through Friday. (And not all private-equity firms care equally about all of the programs.) Her two books are the The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing. COVID-19: Medical Sheltering at the Bell Gardens Quality Inn and Suites 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. How will the virus continue to change? 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. He and McLean previously worked together on All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis, about the 2008 market crash. 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. 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. [1] It details how the financial crisis bubbled up from a volatile, and bipartisan, mixture of government meddling and laissez-faire. Until the capital markets began to get suspicious, private equity investors could flip companies they had funded to larger, public companies, making a profitable exit regardless of whether or not the underlying business was making money. 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. Its a rich history of a company, and a case study in how a corporate culture can turn toxic. How concerning are things like long covid and reinfections? Nocera and McLean writing book on U.S. coronavirus response There are several pots of federal money that the private-equity industry is lobbying to access. 2023 Cond Nast. [citation needed] She began as a contributor to Slate's Moneybox column, in 2010 and "The Bulldog" column in Fortune. Hours All rights reserved. Monday - Friday Manage all aspects of the daily operation for Ham Conversion, processing up to 1.5 million lbs/day . Best-selling author Bethany McLean reveals the true story of fracking's impact - on Wall Street, the economy, and geopolitics. Tar Heel, North Carolina, United States. 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. Vanity Fair may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. According to the Institutional Limited Partners Association. 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. The immunobiologist Akiko Iwasakiwrites that new vaccines, particular those delivered through the nose, may be part of the answer. Traders last year at the New York Stock Exchange near the post that trades Anadarko Petroleum and Occidental Petroleum. Americas largest public pension plan, the California Public Employees Retirement System, or CalPERS, put almost $7 billion into private equity during the 2018-2019 fiscal year, according to Institutional Investor. CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) - McLean County Health, IL Bethany McLean | Chicago Booth Review Here are some tips. Joe Nocera is a journalist and column writer for Dealbook. It once seemed utterly unattainable until the advent of fracking, which unleashed a torrent of oil. The Big Fail - by Joe Nocera & Bethany McLean (Hardcover) Bethany McLean - The New York Times Fracking, they said, was just manufacturing, in which process and human intelligence could reduce costs and conquer geology. Americas energy independence was an illusion created by cheap debt. 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. 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. Whats more, the Milken Institute reported, even by mid-2018, private equity owned more companies than the number of businesses listed on all of the U.S. stock exchanges combined, and have accounted for a more significant source of financing than initial public offerings in many recent years. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Certainly, President Trump, who has staked so much on the American shale industry, wants to save it. 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. There were rumblings that shale companies would seek a federal lifeline. Bethany Lee McLean (born December 12, 1970) is an American journalist and contributing editor for Vanity Fair magazine. 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 (AP) Business writers Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera are collaborating on a critical take of the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic. By Bethany McLean. Its thanks to those who are able to contribute that were able to make the podcast free for anyone to listen to. Bill White wants to restore Americas historical proclivity for balanced budgets. Previous to her current roles, McLean was an editor-at-large at Fortune Magazine. Pension funds that have poured money into private equity firms may take a hit soon, too. 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. 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. How exactly did the alleged illegal activity go down? This location, as with the other County contracted medical sheltering sites, will accept individuals from the local community that are referred through DPH. 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. Bethany Mclean - KPRC COVID-19 Origins: Investigating a "Complex and Grave Situation" Inside a Wuhan Lab. [12], McLean married Chris Wilford in 2000 and divorced in 2006. The active outbreak list is intended to inform the public of the current COVID-19 outbreaks in Los Angeles County. Bethany McLean. I dont think any of us can really believe what we saw today, one industry analyst told AP. 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. 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. The SHIELD saliva-based testing is available for all ages. So the era of low interest rates, which began with former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and continues to this day, has been a huge boon to private-equity firms. 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. Some of it has been packaged into so-called collateralized loan obligations, pieces of which are held by hedge funds. All thats left to tally is the damage. A deal, and higher oil prices, might help the industry. 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. (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.). 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. 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. Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. 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. Click here to take a moment and familiarize yourself with our Community Guidelines. As a result, the stocks that make up the S.&P. If private equity suffers, the blow will reverberate throughout the entire economy. If you need help with the Public File, call (713) 778-4745. today. McLean is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and co-author of the Enron book The Smartest Guys in the Room. Has its bubble finally burst? Blame Congress for the meltdown, not Goldman Sachs. Its still unclear where most of this debt is held. 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. Driven partly by public pensions, the private-equity industry has mushroomed. Whiting Petroleum, whose stock once traded for $150 a share, filed for bankruptcy. 2023 Cond Nast. Coronavirus May Kill Our Fracking Fever Dream, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-texas-fracking-layoffs.html. 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.. Over the past 10 years, the entire energy industry has issued over $400 billion in high-yield debt. 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. McLean started her career as an investment banking analyst for Goldman Sachs[2] and joined Vanity Fair as a contributing editor in 2008. All rights reserved. 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 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 2.Read more about the C.D.C . All rights reserved. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. On April 20, oil prices did something theyve never done before. Even before the coronavirus crisis, the spigot was drying up. 71 members of Sacramento, California church have coronavirus | The The 42 Best Romantic Comedies of All Time, The 25 Best Shows on Netflix to Watch Right Now. All the Devils Are Here - Wikipedia 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. The industrys total assets under management have hit a record $4.1 trillion. Bethany McLean: The Truth about Fracking and How It's Changing - Yahoo! By Bethany McLean Coronavirus May Kill Our Fracking Fever Dream America's energy independence was an illusion created by cheap debt. 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. 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? 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. "[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. 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. If you need help with the Public File, call 540-512-1558. Enron tale author Bethany McLean has a new book she wrote from her 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. North Dakota Coronavirus Map and Case Count - The New York Times 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.. 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. Vanity Fair may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Then came Covid-19, and, on March 8, the sudden and vicious end to the truce between Saudi Arabia and Russia, under which both countries limited production to prop up prices. After Enron's rapid collapse later in 2001, McLean co-authored the book The Smartest Guys in the Room (2003) which detailed the corrupt business practices of Enron officials. After nearly bringing down the economy in 2008, how is it possible that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are still around? 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. One of the key principles behind private equity is that increased leverageaka more debtcan make a business function more efficiently. Bethany College will continue to adapt and collaborate as needed to encourage vaccines and boosters for staff and students. To keep growing, companies have to keep plowing billions back into the ground. 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. Ad Choices. [citation needed], She authored an article on Enron for the March 5, 2001, issue of Fortune entitled, "Is Enron Overpriced? More than 100,000 people already have died in this country from the virus. 208 new COVID cases reported in McLean County Free COVID-19 testing is available at the McLean County Health Department from 9 a.m. to noon every Tuesday and Wednesday in Room 400E of the MCHD building at 200 W. Front St. in Bloomington.