#066 Bethany McLean On The Rise Of Legal Fraud

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