bethany mclean coronavirus

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. Was Tiffany involved? The value of West Texas Intermediate crude, a U.S. benchmark, dipped below zero for a few hourstrading as low as negative $40 a barrel. The promised profits havent materialized. Copyright 2023 WSLS.com is managed by Graham Digital and published by Graham Media Group, a division of Graham Holdings. Like so many other facets of the COVID-19 crisis, however, this unprecedented crash exposed long-running cracks in the facade. Clients who show symptoms of COVID-19 (for example have a fever, cough, or difficulty breathing) and/or are waiting for their test results. Some of it has been packaged into so-called collateralized loan obligations, pieces of which are held by hedge funds. COVID-19 Origins: Investigating a "Complex and Grave Situation" Inside a Wuhan Lab. 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. Bethany McLean is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the author of "Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It's Changing the World." The Power Law Venture Capital and the . TDD: (800) 526-0844 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. More than 100,000 people already have died in this country from the virus. 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. (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. The 42 Best Romantic Comedies of All Time, The 25 Best Shows on Netflix to Watch Right Now. BLOOMINGTON A total of 208 new COVID-19 cases have been reported by the McLean County Health Department from Jan. 27 through Friday. Bethany McLean was born on 12 December 1970 in Hibbing, Minnesota, USA. Previous assignments include editor-at-large, columnist for Fortune, and a contributor to Slate. Bethany McLean is a Vanity Fair contributing editor. McLean is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and co-author of the Enron book The Smartest Guys in the Room. 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. Check out the full Hot & Bothered archive here. [10][11] According to the CARES Act, companies can only receive loans from the Small Business Administration if they commit to preserving jobs. It once seemed utterly unattainable until the advent of fracking, which unleashed a torrent of oil. Bethany McLean. "Dow 36,000" co-authors stand by book's premise. 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. To revisit this article, visit My Profile, thenView saved stories. By now, it should be abundantly clear that the current shale oil business model does not work even for the very best companies in the industry, the investment firm SailingStone Capital Partners explained in a recent note. 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. Bethany McLean is a journalist and contributing editor for Vanity Fair. 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. Nocera is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and co-author of Indentured, about the NCAA. Sign up for our daily Hive newsletter and never miss a story. Americas energy independence was an illusion created by cheap debt. Has its bubble finally burst? Whiting Petroleum, whose stock once traded for $150 a share, filed for bankruptcy. Coronavirus May Kill Our Fracking Fever Dream, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-texas-fracking-layoffs.html. The industry also quietly helps itself to yet more money by having portfolio companies pay fees for consulting and financing services provided by, of course, their private-equity backers. How concerning are things like long covid and reinfections? 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. Its still unclear where most of this debt is held. Bethany McLean is a Vanity Fair contributing editor. A college student in Indiana died in her dorm room after testing positive for the coronavirus, school officials and her family said. 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. But there are ways to make it work better. Thats because one big source of funding didnt dry up: private equity. Like the big banks in 2008, private equity is holding us all hostage. From 2015 through 2019, private equity firms raised almost $80 billion in funds focused mostly on shale production, according to Barclays. About Bethany McLean is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. 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. 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. 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. 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. In 2019, Mclean launched a podcast titled Making a Killing on Luminary. 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. Looking for more? In each of the past four years, according to data-provider Preqin, private-capital managers raised over $500 billion of new money to invest. The active outbreak list is intended to inform the public of the current COVID-19 outbreaks in Los Angeles County. Infuriatingly enough, the financial crisis in 2008 might even have saved private-equity firms from their sins. This week, Ms. McLean begins promoting her new book, "All the Devils are Here," about the current financial crisis. She co-authored a book on the 2008 financial crisis titled All the Devils Are Here. 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. She is a writer, known for Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005), Independent Lens (1999) and PBS NewsHour (1975). She is known for her writing on the Enron scandal and the 2008 financial crisis. Best-selling author Bethany McLean reveals the true story of fracking's impact - on Wall Street, the economy, and geopolitics. Jack Ewings Faster, Higher, Farther is more than the story of a scandal. Private-equity managers won the financial crisis, as Bloomberg put it last fall. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. By Bess Levin . 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. 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.. 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. Rasmussen points out that after the financial crisis in 2008, the Federal Reserve set a limit on the amount of debt it considered prudent. As early as 2018, some investors had begun to tell companies that they wanted to see free cash flow, and that they were tired of compensation models that rewarded executives with rich paydays for increasing production, but failed to take profits into account. [citation needed], She authored an article on Enron for the March 5, 2001, issue of Fortune entitled, "Is Enron Overpriced? Smithfield Foods. McLean graduated from Hibbing High School in 1988. 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.. She was previously married to Christopher Roberts Wilford. Monday - Friday The Next Financial Crisis Lurks Underground, Coronavirus May Kill Our Fracking Fever Dream. Driven partly by public pensions, the private-equity industry has mushroomed. 2023 Cond Nast. It is absolutely imperative, Waters recently wrote in support of private equity, that the reliefbe extended to protect all workers, irrespective of the affiliations of their employers. Translation: Workers shouldnt suffer just because their bosses sold a controlling stake in their businesses to a bunch of greedy fat cats. 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. A journalist profiles the developers and devotees who have aided the rise of cybercurrency. 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. The man who shot his girlfriend and five relatives at a birthday celebration had "control issues". A deal, and higher oil prices, might help the industry. Bethany Lee McLean (born December 12, 1970) is an American journalist and contributing editor for Vanity Fair magazine. [12], McLean married Chris Wilford in 2000 and divorced in 2006. 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. NEW YORK Business writers Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera are collaborating on a critical take of the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic. 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 . 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. January 2022 was the month with the highest average cases, while November 2020 was the month with the highest . Confirmed cases include those reported since the beginning of the current active outbreak and may include cases that . 500 energy sector fell 20 percent, marking the sectors largest drop on record. The Wuhan Institute of Virology, the cutting-edge . She has been married to Sean Murray Berkowitz since May 2008. More than 100,000 people already have died in this country from the virus. 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. All thats left to tally is the damage. [citation needed] She began as a contributor to Slate's Moneybox column, in 2010 and "The Bulldog" column in Fortune. The immunobiologist Akiko Iwasakiwrites that new vaccines, particular those delivered through the nose, may be part of the answer. All that's left to tally is the damage. Fracking, they said, was just manufacturing, in which process and human intelligence could reduce costs and conquer geology. 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. Joe Nocera is a journalist and column writer for Dealbook. To keep growing, companies have to keep plowing billions back into the ground. Anyone can read what you share. He and McLean previously worked together on All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis, about the 2008 market crash. Portfolio, a Penguin Random House imprint . Recent and archived work by Bethany McLean for The New York Times. 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. 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. 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. The half decade from 2013 to 2018 saw the most private-equity deals over any five-year period in American history. They have two children. Private equity has made multibillionaires of executives like Blackstones Steve Schwarzman (net worth: $17.5 billion) and Apollos Leon Black ($7.5 billion). Manage all aspects of the daily operation for Ham Conversion, processing up to 1.5 million lbs/day . In 2018, according to analytics firm eVestment, pension funds in the U.S. and the U.K. pumped 27% of their fresh allocations of money into private-equity funds, up from 25% the year before. The basic reason is that the amount of oil coming out of a fracked well declines steeply after the first year more than 50 percent in year two. 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. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. And more! Its thanks to those who are able to contribute that were able to make the podcast free for anyone to listen to. Traders last year at the New York Stock Exchange near the post that trades Anadarko Petroleum and Occidental Petroleum. 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. But it doesnt have to be a blank check. Music: Mercurias Meet Victor Rice, Carregar (Instrumental), courtesy of Total Running Time. Dont hesitate: sign up on Patreon today. Here are some tips. (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.). David Wallace Wells writes that by one estimate. 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? Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Its thanks to those who are able to contribute that were able to make the podcast free for anyone to listen to. And President Trump reveled in the rhetoric: We hadnt merely achieved independence, his administration said, but rather energy dominance.. But that didnt seem to matter, because low interest rates facilitated private equity in another way. Deaths, active cases . 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 material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. [4], In 2005, McLean got into a spat with then-CEO of Overstock.com Patrick M. Byrne after she wrote a negative article about Overstock and him.[5][6]. Click here to take a moment and familiarize yourself with our Community Guidelines. The industrys lack of profits wasnt exactly a secret. She has co-authored multiple bestselling books, including The Smartest Guys in the Room and All the Devils Are Here. NEW YORK Business writers Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera are collaborating on a critical take of the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic. All rights reserved. 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. 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. 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. After nearly bringing down the economy in 2008, how is it possible that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are still around? 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. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer), (Rick Bowmer, Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. [1] In 1992 she received a B.A. 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. A hydraulic fracturing site in Denton, Texas. 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. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/covid-by-county.htm January 12, 2022 COVID Update Update on Bethany College COVID Response (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer), Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. 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 . 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. COVID-19 Guidance for isolation and quarantine, COVID-19 Education and Outreach Materials Page. 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. He and McLean previously worked together on All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis, about the 2008 market crash. Bethany College will continue to adapt and collaborate as needed to encourage vaccines and boosters for staff and students. I dont think any of us can really believe what we saw today, one industry analyst told AP. sure to go down in history as one of the wildest business stories ever. 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. Occidental is just one piece of the puzzle. [7][8] The Washington Post selected it as one of the best nonfiction books of 2015. 500 energy sector fell, questions weve gathered from readers recently, adequate research and support for sufferers, according to the law firm Haynes and Boone. The fracking boom that drove a decade of record U.S. oil and gas production was never really profitable to begin with. COVID-19 Origins: Investigating a "Complex and Grave Situation" Inside a Wuhan Lab. NEW YORK Business writers Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera are collaborating on a critical take of the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic. McLean is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and co-author of the Enron book "The Smartest Guys in the Room." Nocera. In early 2015, the hedge fund manager David Einhorn announced at an investment conference that he had looked at the financial statements of 16 publicly traded shale producers and found that from 2006 to 2014, they spent $80 billion more than they received from selling oil. That means public pensions might be forced to dump their holdings in public-backed investments to provide private-equity firms with emergency casha move that could depress the stock market even further. 1 FOR PHARMACISTS PRESCRIBING PAXLOVID: This service is available in all locations, with the exception of those in New Hampshire. 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. The politics dictating whether the private-equity industry will get its wishes are surprising. 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. Almost everything thats happened since 2008 has tilted in their favor. Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. 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. 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. 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. Tar Heel, North Carolina, United States. 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. And North American oil and gas drillers have almost $100 billion of debt that is set to mature in the next four years. Previous to her current roles, McLean was an editor-at-large at Fortune Magazine. 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. 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. (And not all private-equity firms care equally about all of the programs.) Archive Wall Street Too Big to Fail, COVID-19 Edition: How Private Equity Is Winning the Coronavirus Crisis April 9, 2020 From the. Exclusive: Inside the S--tshow That Was the Trump-Biden Transition. Now, it has been shut off. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. David Wallace Wells writes that by one estimate, 100,000 Americans could die each yearfrom the coronavirus. Previous assignments include editor-at-large, columnist for Fortune, and a contributor to Slate . 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. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. James Glassman says his seven-year-old prediction that the Dow Jones industrial average will rise to 36,000 wasn't wrong, just early. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous . 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. And why not? 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. But with super-low interest rates, investors in search of yield were still willing to buy debt. According to the Institutional Limited Partners Association (ILPA), a lobbying group which represents CalPERs and other public investors, businesses backed by private equity employ more than 8.8 million Americans at over 35,000 companies, accounting for a staggering 5% of the United States GDP. Certainly, President Trump, who has staked so much on the American shale industry, wants to save it. Paying members will get access to perks like a. by Kate Aronoff, Alyssa Battistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen, and Thea Riofrancos, and much more. What the Theranos trial says about the blurred lines between visionaries and frauds. In the first half of 2019, when oil was around $55 a barrel, only a few top-tier companies were profitable. [16] McLean resides in Chicago with her children. Waters, in her letter, argues for placing even more strings on the money taken by private-equity-backed companies. But they wont fix its fundamental problem with profitability. These firms not only have a record $1.5 trillion in cash on the sidelines, waiting to be invested, but their CEOs are among Americas richest executives. [1] It details how the financial crisis bubbled up from a volatile, and bipartisan, mixture of government meddling and laissez-faire. As a result, private equity is now wound into the very fabric of our economy. As for Pelosi, she doesnt want to see companies backed by venture capital excluded from federal relief, given her Silicon Valley constituents. All rights reserved. She has suggestions for how to approach the problem. 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. Thats because oil fracking has never been financially viable. 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..