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

And these things taken together make me worried.

You know, there still is an argument that it will all be okay in the end.

And just because so many people, including me, are looking at it, it might be okay in the end because the crises tend to erupt where nobody's looking, right?

But there are enough risk factors here that I think it's concerning.

Yeah, well, it could because private equity is so big now.

It makes up so much of the market that if there is a decline in private equity, the private equity market and the publicly traded market are now, they're not an offset to each other.

They're actually quite, they're quite related.

Because right now, for instance, private equity firms are sitting on this giant backlog of investments that they can't sell because they have them marked at levels that are too high and they can't be sold into the public market.

But if the public markets are to crack, that backlog gets worse and worse and worse.

And so private equity firms are dependent on the performance of the public market.

So there's this interplay between the two that is just not great.

My view is that we should end the distinction between private markets and public markets because the underlying investors in each are actually the same.

The big investors in the private equity firms are pension plans who hold all of our retirements or many of our retirements in their grasp.

So if the underlying investors are the same, why are their public markets and private markets?

Why not just regulate it all the same thing, all the same way?

I think it depends on each situation and you have to look at it.

I think there are really good private equity firms out there that really are adding value to the businesses they acquire and are creating something better and are bringing capital to areas that are underserved and need it.

And then I think there are purely predatory operations.

And I don't even think it's as simple as each looking firm by firm.

I think you almost have to look at each deal.

Showing 361–380 of 391 · page 19 of 20