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Megan McArdle

Megan McArdle - Megan McArdle is a senior editor for The Atlantic who writes about business and economics. She has worked at three start-ups, a consulting firm, an investment bank, a disaster recovery firm at Ground Zero, and The Economist. More

Megan was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and yes, she does enjoy her lattes, as well as the occasional extra-dry skim-milk cappuccino. Her checkered work history includes three start-ups, four years as a technology project manager for a boutique consulting firm, a summer as an associate at an investment bank, and a year spent as sort of an executive copy girl for one of the disaster-recovery firms at Ground Zero … all before the age of 30.

While working at Ground Zero, Megan started Live From the WTC, a blog focused on economics, business, and cooking. She may or may not have been the first major economics blogger, depending on whether we are allowed to throw outlying variables such as Brad Delong out of the set. From there it was but a few steps down the slippery slope to freelance journalism. She has worked in various capacities for The Economist, where she wrote about economics and oversaw the founding of Free Exchange, the magazine's economics blog. She has also maintained her own blog, Asymmetrical Information, which moved to The Atlantic, along with its owner, in August 2007.

Megan holds a bachelor's degree in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago. After a lifetime as a New Yorker, she now resides in northwest Washington, D.C., where she is still trying to figure out what one does with an apartment larger than 400 square feet.
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Bear raid?

By Megan McArdle

Mar 19 2008, 11:50 AM ET Comment

There are rumors floating around that Bear Stearns was the victim of a bear raid. That's when you short the stock and then use one of a variety of manipulations--such as spreading rumors that Bear Stearns might be insolvent--to make the stock plunge so you make a killing.

No doubt the share price--currently $5.58--is being buoyed in part by short covers. But a deliberate conspiracy? Bear raids are illegal, and the SEC is a bit touchy right now--and of course, shorting financial stocks wasn't exactly an original idea these last six months. I'm also suspicious that so far no one I know who works on Wall Street has offered this as a potential explanation. Readers?

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