#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