Bethany McLean
Bethany McLean
Bethany McLeanis a contributing editor to Vanity Fair magazine, and known for her work on the Enron scandal and the 2008 financial crisis. She had been an editor at large and columnist for Fortune and a contributor to Slate...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEditor
Date of Birth12 December 1970
CountryUnited States of America
bit curtain people practices pulled
Before Enron, I think people were a bit more naive about the way things worked, and I think Enron pulled the curtain back on unsavoury practices that turned out to be a lot more widespread.
choose people presented sure
Choices of right or wrong are not presented to you in black and white. If they were, I'm sure most people would choose white.
acceptable change corporate executives jobs ok people precedent retirement savings trial
It doesn't really change anything. It's not like people will get their jobs back or their retirement savings back. But I do think the trial is important. It will set a precedent of what's acceptable corporate conduct. Is it OK for executives to do anything so long as it's technically legal?
thinking people claims
I think synergies are a lot like UFOs: Lots of people claim to have seen them, but few can actually prove they exist.
believe ceo certain company deceive delusion early enron financial fraudulent innocent jeff ken lay lesson mean met observer people powerful self smart trial
the powerful lesson from Enron for me is the power of self delusion and how people rationalise and deceive themselves. And I think when Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling say they are innocent now, as they do with their trial approaching in early 2006, they mean it on a certain level. One smart financial observer said to me that he's never met the CEO of a fraudulent company who didn't come to believe in what he'd created.
believed billions company deserve dollars enron gone importance investors later lost naive people picked rest thousands took underlying whether wrote
The story took on an importance later that it did not deserve originally. Whether I wrote that story or not, Enron would have gone bankrupt, investors would have lost billions of dollars and thousands of people would have lost their jobs. I just picked up on an underlying skepticism. If you had told me then that the company would go under by the end of the year, I would have never believed it. I was as naive as the rest of us.
jeff ken piece wrote
The worst story I ever wrote was after the conviction of Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay. My co-author and I wrote a piece for 'Fortune' saying everything's going to be different now.
argued capital fund needed
Proponents of privatization argued that cities and states needed private capital to fund all the upgrades that our decaying infrastructure so desperately needed.
almost believer fix fixed power provides regulation
I'm not a big believer in the power of more regulation to fix things. I think it can almost be more dangerous because it provides the illusion that things have been fixed without the substance.
good
What's good for the financial industry probably isn't good for you.
capital fountain health holy trust
In capital we trust. Capital is our savior, our holy grail, our fountain of youth, or at least health, for banks.
hard next rightly worries
Google worries - and rightly so - about how hard it is for a big company to come up with the next hot thing.
fixing mac
Fixing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in isolation, without looking at the big picture, would be short-sighted.
ability access advise banks cities financing market states whether
The big banks advise cities about whether privatization is a wise choice. They also control the ability of states and cities to access the market for their financing needs.