Chronically Short-Sighted

There was a time – not so long ago – when financial reporting wasn’t the equivalent of a goldfish peering at the world through a foggy bowl. Economists and policymakers, for all their faults, once anchored their observations to spans of a year or more. Inflation was measured against the same period last year. Currency fluctuations were contextualised with data going back a quarter or two. GDP growth or contraction reflected trends across seasons. There was a sense of perspective, of seeing the forest rather than ogling each twig in a panic.

 

Now, however, we’ve descended into a realm of frenetic myopia, where comparisons are drawn over laughably short intervals. The inflation figures might be up 0.2% this week compared to last – or was that compared to last Thursday’s revised estimate? Headlines screech about the pound "soaring" or "plummeting," only to reveal it’s fluctuated by less than a penny since Monday. This isn’t financial analysis; it’s a rolling soap opera for the terminally anxious.

What purpose does this serve? Surely not clarity. Weekly inflation reports, daily currency snapshots, and hourly market updates obscure far more than they illuminate. A single week of calm prices is heralded as the end of inflation; a fortnight of mild increases becomes evidence of doom. Such minute parsing invites overreaction, not measured response.

The truth is that the shift to these ever-shorter comparisons doesn’t reflect a more sophisticated grasp of economics but rather an attention economy that demands constant drama. Journalists, pundits, and political opportunists are all complicit in this reductive circus. A government minister can claim inflation is "falling" by cherry-picking a fortnight’s worth of data – never mind the monthly or annual picture that tells a starkly different tale. Equally, the opposition can seize on a week’s poor showing to paint the entire economy as a flaming wreck, hoping no one recalls the broader context.

And what of the ordinary person trying to make sense of all this noise? They’re left chasing their tail, bombarded by contradictory signals. One day they’re told their pay rise has outpaced inflation for the first time in ages; the next, a new "weekly inflation rate" says otherwise. It’s enough to make one long for the days of calm retrospection – when "quarterly reports" actually meant something, and annual comparisons allowed for a sense of progression (or regression) that wasn’t undone by the latest micro-trend.

But let’s not kid ourselves. The rise of these absurdly short-term comparisons isn’t just about journalistic laziness or political gamesmanship. It reflects an economic system increasingly untethered from any semblance of long-term planning. When the only goal is to keep the market happy for the next five minutes, it’s no wonder the metrics have shrunk to match.

It’s high time we demand a return to sanity in financial discourse. Stop comparing apples to last week’s bananas. Re-anchor our analysis to meaningful periods that capture the economy’s true ebbs and flows. Otherwise, we risk living in a world where the only trend that matters is how much worse things can get by tomorrow – or, failing that, by teatime.