Numbers never lie, they say. And yet, as soon as a number leaves the statistical dashboard to enter public debate, that same figure begins to illuminate several realities at once. A growth rate that is only slightly slower becomes, depending on who comments on it, the sign of a controlled slowdown, an imminent crisis, or a simple cyclical adjustment. The indicator remains the same. The narrative, however, fragments.
This fragmentation is not a minor communication glitch. It now traverses the entire global economic sphere, still frail after a succession of shocks that has reshuffled the maps of analysis: the health crisis of 2020, cascading geopolitical tensions, the increasingly urgent climate emergency. Since 2020, the international economic community has warned of a risk of persistent stagflation and of the over-indebtedness of many states, forced to borrow more to preserve their resilience.
In the face of these upheavals, central banks themselves tread on a contradictory terrain, pressed to keep benchmark rates high to curb inflation, while, in the same breath, urged to lower them to revive investment. This great monetary stretch is only the most visible symptom of a broader rethink: that of a globally interconnected economic system whose recent faults have revived, across the board, debates about economic sovereignty.
A recent analysis devoted to the divergences in how economic indicators are read usefully reminds us that this cacophony is not solely a matter of the conjuncture. It stems from the very way economic information is constructed, circulated, and distorted, from the expert who states it to the public who receives it.
The triangle that distorts the message
