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Bethany McLean

Bethany McLean is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair.

Previously, she was an editor-at-large at Fortune Magazine, where her 2001 piece, “Is Enron Overpriced?” was one of the first skeptical articles about Enron. After Enron collapsed into bankruptcy, she co-authored the “Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron” with her Fortune colleague Peter Elkind. A documentary based on the book was nominated for an Academy Award in 2006.

In 2008, McLean joined Vanity Fair as a contributing editor. In 2010, her book “All the Devils are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis,” which she co-authored with New York Times columnist Joe Nocera, was published. In 2015, Columbia Global Reports published her book “Shaky Ground: The Strange Saga of the US Mortgage Giants,” and in the fall of 2018, CGR published “Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It’s Changing the World.”

Her 2016 Vanity Fair story on disgraced pharmaceutical company Valeant was used as the basis for Netflix’s “Dirty Money” episode about the drugmaker.

She is also a columnist for Yahoo Finance and a contributor to CNBC.

McLean graduated from Williams College in 1992 with a double major in math and English, and from 1992 to 1995 she worked as an investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs.

In addition to her writing, McLean is a keynote speaker and panel moderator.

Categories: Author and Writer, Current Events, News and Politics, Economics and Finance, Ethics

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Videos

Topics

Shaky Ground: The Strange Saga of the U.S. Mortgage Giants

The Financial Crisis (All the Devils Are Here)

Business Ethics

Panel Moderator

Books

Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It's Changing the World

Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It's Changing the World

Bestselling author Bethany McLean reveals the true story of fracking's impact -- on Wall Street, the economy and geopolitics.

You can purchase this book here

Shaky Ground: The Strange Saga of the U.S. Mortgage Giants

Shaky Ground: The Strange Saga of the U.S. Mortgage Giants

Housing was at the root of the 2008 financial crisis, and, seven years after the meltdown, homeownership finance is still the biggest unsolved issue in the management of the economy. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, gigantic entities with assets in the trillions of dollars, were created by Congress to serve the dream of the U.S. as a global pioneer in creating a society of individual homeowners. A few days before Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, the U.S. Treasury put Fannie and Freddie into "conservatorship," a kind of government life support system, because their failure would have caused worldwide economic chaos. Today, Fannie and Freddie are still in conservatorship, with their profits redirected toward reduction of the federal deficit, which leaves them dangerously low on financial reserves. Russia, China and Japan are among the countries invested in Fannie and Freddie bonds; if they lost confidence in the safety of these instruments, the worldwide economic and political consequences would be severe. In SHAKY GROUND, Bethany McLean brings the biggest underreported aspect of the crisis into the public light and explains why the situation of our mortgage finance system held in limbo is dangerous and unsustainable - and must be placed on firmer ground.

You can purchase this book here

All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis

All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis

"Hell is empty, and all the devils are here."--Shakespeare, The Tempest As soon as the financial crisis erupted, the finger-pointing began. Should the blame fall on Wall Street, Main Street, or Pennsylvania Avenue? On greedy traders, misguided regulators, sleazy subprime companies, cowardly legislators, or clueless home buyers? According to Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera, two of America's most acclaimed business journalists, the real answer is all of the above-and more. Many devils helped bring hell to the economy. And the full story, in all of its complexity and detail, is like the legend of the blind men and the elephant. Almost everyone has missed the big picture. Almost no one has put all the pieces together. All the Devils Are Here goes back several decades to weave the hidden history of the financial crisis in a way no previous book has done. It explores the motivations of everyone from famous CEOs, cabinet secretaries, and politicians to anonymous lenders, borrowers, analysts, and Wall Street traders. It delves into the powerful American mythology of homeownership. And it proves that the crisis ultimately wasn't about finance at all; it was about human nature. Just as McLean's The Smartest Guys in the Room was hailed as the best Enron book on a crowded shelf, so will All the Devils Are Here be remembered for finally making sense of the meltdown and its consequences.

You can purchase this book here

The Smartest Guys in the Room

The Smartest Guys in the Room

Meticulously researched and character driven, Smartest Guys in the Room takes the reader deep into Enron's past-and behind the closed doors of private meetings. Drawing on a wide range of unique sources, the book follows Enron's rise from obscurity to the top of the business world to its disastrous demise. It reveals as never before major characters such as Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and Andy Fastow, as well as lesser known players like Cliff Baxter and Rebecca Mark. Smartest Guys in the Room is a story of greed, arrogance, and deceit-a microcosm of all that is wrong with American business today. Above all, it's a fascinating human drama that will prove to be the authoritative account of the Enron scandal.

You can purchase this book here

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