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Bethany McLean’s Weekend Reading List: Robinhood, Quibi, and Corporate America’s Addiction to Debt

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Corruption, lobbyingcorporate malfeasance, and frauds: a weekly unconventional selection of must-read articles by investigative journalist Bethany McLean. 


At least some things stay in the same. Even in the middle of a life-changing pandemic, Wall Street is still finding ways to separate people from what little money they have. I suppose it’s reassuring on some level…well, no. It’s just horrifying. 


Have you ever wondered how it is that we all became addicted to debt? Here’s at least a part of the explanation.


I suppose this story about the rise and not-quite-fall-but flounder of Quibi could be disheartening! But in a way, it’s sort of encouraging that smart people can throw “ungodly amounts of money” at creating content we’re all supposed to watch, only to find that no one is watching it.  As long as humans remain somewhat unpredictable, the robots can’t win. H/T @Barry Ritholtz

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Bethany McLean is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, a columnist for Yahoo Finance, and a contributor to CNBC. Her 2001 Fortune piece, “Is Enron Overpriced?,” was one of the first skeptical articles about the company. After Enron collapsed into bankruptcy, she co-authored (with Peter Elkind) The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron. A documentary based on the book was nominated for an Academy Award in 2006. She is also the author of All the Devils Are Here (with Joe Nocera), Shaky Ground, and Saudi America. Along with Luigi Zingales, she co-hosts the Podcast Capitalisn't.

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