Bethany McLean

speaker

391 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 2 Aug

Bethany McLean’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing · Part 1: How to Spot a Corporate Fraud Before It Makes the Headlines · 26 Jul 2026 podcast

You should have seen the related party discussions.

You should make sure that you understand, for example, in Enron's case, the cash flow statement didn't make sense relative to the income statement because the income statement showed earnings going straight up, marching upwards on this beautifully predictable line.

And the cash flow statement was all over the place and you couldn't really reconcile the two statements.

And so that's all important if you have a big portion of your portfolio exposed to a certain name.

I'd also watch for signs of hype.

Whenever you see a management team start to disconnect from the reality of the business, and this one is a little bit tricky today too, and I'll explain what I mean.

But, you know, in Enron's case, Jeff Skilling went from saying this is the world's leading energy company to world's leading company.

And when you see a CEO start to talk too much in terms of market value rather than in terms of value provided, I always see that as a red flag.

The difference today, and I wrote a piece for the Washington Post last fall about when CEOs turn hype into capital.

And the difference today is that the more hype you can generate around your stock, the more access you have to the markets, the more ability you have to raise money.

And if you are losing money today, then potentially the more opportunity you have to succeed.

And so the rules are a little trickier today than they used to be.

Right.

Well, I think one really important thing, and it's such an old school thing, but really understand the company's debt, how much there is and how much access it needs to the capital markets.

Because companies that are dependent on the capital markets, should that access go away, either because investors lose confidence in that particular narrative,

or because there is a capital markets cataclysm, it's a risk factor.

And you should understand that.

So I just recently wrote about SpaceX for The New York Times, and that's kind of the epitome of this debate, right?

But SpaceX, one analyst predicted, needs to raise some $80 billion of capital each year to continue to fund its aspirations.

that's a lot of money and that's a lot of risk.

Showing 281–300 of 391 · page 15 of 20