“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here.”
–Sue Monk Kidd
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Some intriguing-sounding projects, I suppose.
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Cheats, frauds, and liars everywhere need to take a long, hard look in the mirror as the year comes to a close. Dishonesty, which one must say has had a pretty good run over the past few decades, has had a terrible 2023, as reflected in a string of what should have been avoidable convictions and exposures.
Where to begin? Rudy Giuliani, who embellished his comprehensively futile attempts to overturn the results of a presidential election by telling transparent untruths about a pair of poll workers, has been ordered to pay them $148mn for defamation. George Santos, who assumed made-up racial, familial and professional identities while running for Congress, was expelled from that body by his colleagues, who have been known to put up with quite a lot. Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted on all seven counts of fraud and money laundering after the jury deliberated just long enough to collect their full $40 per diem for their last day of work. Just last week, serial, er, entrepreneur Trevor Milton, founder of the truckmaker Nikola, was given four years for lying to investors about his company’s technology, and there was a little bit of trouble about real estate valuations over at the Vatican.
Professional standards among the crooked are clearly in decline. Here, then, are some recommendations for those who plan on fabricating their way to success in 2024:
Have lots of friends. This is important for vocational liars not only because it gives you someone to flip on when the authorities come around, but because it spreads responsibility widely. The safest way to turn indifference to truth and decency into money and power is to be a part of a whole class of people like yourself, not a single big shot. A whole class of financial executives walked away clean from the 2008 crisis because so many other people were acting out the same greed-driven fantasy. Giuliani’s downfall was not in pushing Trump’s nonsense so much as in pushing himself to the front, where all the cameras were. Similarly, did Santos believe he was to succeed as a solo fraud in an institution as collegial as Congress? Come on.
Social media is, surprisingly, not that great a place to lie. The judge in Milton’s case singled out his use of the internet for propagating his falsehoods. Bankman-Fried’s famous “FTX is fine” tweet played a big role at his trial. Once the internet was a magical wonderland where everything was true and no one was accountable. Now it is just a place where your lies are indelibly recorded, usually in language a jury finds it very easy to understand. If you want to turn the truth on its head, for goodness’ sake use long words and jargon, and if you must write it down, put it somewhere harmless, like your company’s annual report.
Lying is a tool, not a lifestyle. One of the odd things about lying is that it is habit forming. In the middle of his sentencing hearing for defaming the poll workers, Giuliani walked out of the courtroom, found some reporters, and repeated his lies. Rudy, no one expects you to tell the truth at this point but you might, you know, shut up once in a while?
Dress for success. Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos invented corporate fraud as a fancy-dress activity, with her deeply creepy Steve Jobs cosplay. After her conviction, you’d think the strategy might have been abandoned. But along comes Bankman-Fried, sticking your billions in the pockets of his cargo shorts. Pro tip: if you don’t plan on wearing it at the trial, don’t wear it while committing the crime.
Keep it general. Wherever possible lies should be told about classes of people (Republicans, elites, big business, the media, et al) not specific individuals. You start naming specific people and you are well into the territory of the provably untrue and, more to the point, concrete individuals are much more likely to sue your ass into the ground than are theoretical groups. Giuliani was doing fine at the level of abstract conspiracy. But then he went after two particular citizens, and now he is finished. Santos lied about the most specific person of all: himself.
Admittedly, following rules such as these takes a lot of the fun out of dishonesty. But the unfortunate truth is that professional lying is a lot like professional gambling: it may sound like an adventure at first but, done properly, it’s just a lot of work.
Robert Armstrong is the FT’s US financial commentator and writes the Unhedged newsletter