Bethany McLean
Contributing Editor, Vanity Fair · 1 appearance on the record.
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Bethany McLean gained national prominence after writing the 2001 Fortune article questioning Enron's financials and co-authoring The Smartest Guys in the Room. She focuses on corporate malfeasance and economic crises, having also co-authored All the Devils Are Here and The Big Fail.
45statements → 14claims → 8claims resolved → 88%fully supported → 3.84/5average certainty → 2.58/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated →
7 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 6 not checkable as stated how the 14 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
3 predictions · 11 assertions · 9 opinions · 19 insights · 2 disclosures · 1 what if · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 14 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 8 are resolved, and 6 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Bethany argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
Their most notable supported claim
McLean: Valeant's Pearson Weaponized 'Micro Truths' About Drug Profit Growth
“So Mike Pearson, right, had that argument, I'm gonna get it slightly wrong, but he said that most of Valiant's profit growth was not coming from increasing prices on drugs, it was coming from volume. And that turned out to be true if you looked at only their t…”
Expressed certainty vs assessment result
weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet
How they sound: not measured why? →
We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Bethany McLean on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Bethany McLean said on the Knowledge Project that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
McLean: Elon Musk has repeatedly lied to secure funding for his vision
“That's certainly true of Elon Musk. Wherever you believe he sits in that spectrum, when you look at his history, he's for sure lied at many points in time in order to keep funding his dream.”
McLean: Private equity fracking returns relied on a greater fool theory
“For a long time private equity could get a return on the greater fool theory. They would fund these fracking entrepreneurs who would go out and drill wells, and then they would sell that to a publicly traded company, and the private equity guys would make a to…”
McLean: Fracking executives extract wealth while leaving society cleanup liabilities
“It's another case of capitalism gone wrong, and that a lot of people at the top of these companies have made their billions, and walked away from it, and then the rest of society is left to clean up the mess, because the companies are bankrupt, and don't have …”
McLean: Employees cannot objectively perceive wrongdoing when their pay depends on it
“If you're inside a company and your pay depends on that company, that's that great Upton Sinclair quote, right? You can never tell a man anything if his wallet depends on him not hearing it. That's something like that. If you're inside a company and everybody …”
McLean: Most of Enron's transactions were legal fraud adhering to accounting rules
“Most of what Enron did was actually perfectly legal. So I coined this term once, which I love, which is a legal fraud. And that's what Enron was, because most of the transactions they engaged in, even the ones that appeared to be the most problematic, actually…”
McLean: Valeant pitched zero R&D and justified price hikes against liver transplants
“Their whole promise to investors was, we don't need to do R&D. So it wasn't an argument of, we're gonna take the profits we're making from this and invent new drugs that are gonna save people's lives or figure out a better drug to take, to treat this disease. …”
McLean: Modern capitalism lets top executives reap rewards while shifting risk downward
“I do think either accidentally or deliberately our system has evolved to one in which the people who should be taking the really big risks and then reaping the really big rewards, it's turned into a system where those people can reap the really big rewards, bu…”
McLean: Google and Facebook's models will be impaired if journalism dies
“Google and Facebook, right? They're siphoning up most of the advertising dollars that used to go to journalism, and yet Google and Facebook, it will deeply impair their business models if journalism ceases to function, right?”
McLean: Stock performance does not rationally prove Elon Musk is a genius
“In the Tesla debate, one of the main things Tesla bulls say is, look at the stock. So, because the stock has done so well, that proves that Elon Musk is a genius and that our belief is, is right. I mean, obviously, it proves nothing of the sort, right? It's a …”
McLean: Silicon Valley mistakenly excuses executive character flaws as Steve Jobs-like genius
“Part of what's gone wrong in modern Silicon Valley is that everybody believes he's the rule, right? So all sorts of character flaws have become forgivable, because hey, look at Steve Jobs, and look what he did. And flaws have almost become a good thing, becaus…”
McLean: Valeant's Pearson Weaponized 'Micro Truths' About Drug Profit Growth
“So Mike Pearson, right, had that argument, I'm gonna get it slightly wrong, but he said that most of Valiant's profit growth was not coming from increasing prices on drugs, it was coming from volume. And that turned out to be true if you looked at only their t…”
McLean: Fracking is financially unviable due to steep year-one well decline
“A fracked well declines really sharply after the first year, which means in order to keep production levels up, you have to keep reinvesting. So you're on this capital treadmill, and that's why the industry has not been financially viable, because you have to …”
McLean: Fortune's Enron takedown originated from short seller Jim Chanos' tip
“But this piece, nonetheless, which started when a guy named Jim Chanos, who many people know, he's one of the longest-running short sellers out there, came to me and said, how does Enron make money? Tell me if you can figure it out.”
McLean: Credit markets doubted Enron while equity investors remained total believers
“There were a lot of smart people who were short the stock for a while, and even though the information, their skepticism traveled in a very small circle, the broader circle of people didn't really understand how, how the company made money, and there was this …”
McLean: Enron's hyped broadband division was conceptually Netflix before its time
“Enron's really hyped business was this business called Enron Broadband, which it's an interesting aside. It really was Netflix before its time.”
McLean: Corporate management and long investors are as biased as short sellers
“Company management is biased. The analyst who has a buy rating on the stock is biased if for no other reason than confirmation bias, right? And portfolio managers who own the stock are biased, and so yes, a short seller is biased too, but everyone is.”
McLean: Companies that make enemies on the way up face vicious reversals
“But I think about this a lot, that if a company makes a lot of enemies as it's on its way up, you have to be a lot more skeptical about that company than about an average company, because when the tide turns, it's going to turn viciously.”
McLean: Shareholder Primacy Has Narrowed Executive Ethics to Profit Alone
“As the focus has been on shareholder value and profits above all, it's just narrowed the prism through which executives see the world, and it's become very tempting to say, well, if it makes money, then it's good.”
McLean: Fake corporate altruism is almost worse than single-minded profiteering
“That belief that a company has a broader purpose can become a cover, an excuse for a lot of bad behavior too, right? Because fake altruism is almost worse than single-minded profiteering, right?”
McLean: White-collar crime stems from ego and rationalization, not deliberate malice
“I've really come to believe that very few white-collar crimes or stories of business gone wrong are done by people who deliberately set out to deceive other people. Usually it's this odd mixture of Rationalization. Arrogance. Some greed, yes, but usually greed…”
McLean: Lloyd Blankfein Told FT He Did Not Consider Himself Well-Off
“The Financial Times did a really good interview with Lloyd Blankfein, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs. It was a couple of months ago, maybe a month ago, and Blankfein said in that interview that he didn't consider himself particularly well off.”
McLean: Wealth Accumulation Beyond Basic Needs Serves Ego, Not Utility
“Money over a certain point, if it's your goal, is for sure not in service of material goods or making your life nicer. It's just about comparing your balance to those of other people so you can feel bigger than they are, and so that's what I mean by greed in t…”
McLean: Many visionaries lie to keep investors funding their dreams
“Because a lot of visionaries from Thomas Edison through have lied at various points in time and have said things that weren't true in order to keep their employees and their investors believing in them so they can keep getting the money to fund their dreams.”
McLean: Inevitable corporate frauds are the price society pays for world-changing ambition
“And I think that's the inevitable frauds and blow ups are the price we pay. And I think it's good to have these big, grand, ambitious plans. Life would be really boring if you didn't have that. And I think reflexive cynicism about this sort of thing is just as…”
Appearances (1)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| #85 Bethany McLean: Crafting a Narrative | Jun 9, 2020 | 1h 11m |