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- <text id=93TT0246>
- <title>
- July 26, 1993: It's All In the Lie
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993
- July 26, 1993 The Flood Of '93
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- BEHAVIOR, Page 54
- It's All In the Lie
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p>Cheats on the links are cheats on the job
- </p>
- <p> The savings and loan crisis. The B.C.C.I. caper. Insider trading.
- Think of all the notorious business scandals that briefly enriched
- white-collar crooks during the greedy '80s. All those financial
- fiascoes might have been prevented with a simple lie-detector
- test: golf.
- </p>
- <p> For proof, consider Golf and the Business Executive, an "attitudinal
- study" (translation: poll) by Hyatt Hotels & Resorts. In the
- survey, nearly half of 401 executives agreed that "the way a
- person plays golf is very similar to how he or she conducts
- business affairs." At least some were speaking from self-knowledge:
- 55% admitted cheating at golf at least once. The offenses included
- moving the ball to get a better lie (41% of the executives),
- not counting a missed tap-in (19%), taking an extra tee shot
- (13%), intentionally miscounting strokes (8%) and secretly producing
- a fresh ball while pretending to look for a wayward one in the
- woods (6%). Such behavior has dire implications for the nation's
- Better Business Bureaus, since one-third of those who confessed
- to cheating on the links also admitted to pulling fast ones
- on the job.
- </p>
- <p> Conclusion: if only someone had noticed Charles Keating Jr.
- and colleagues emerging from sand traps with suspicious ease,
- American taxpayers would not now be billions of dollars in the
- hole.
- </p>
- <p> By Michael Quinn
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
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