Almost every day, new economic information is made available to us through the newspapers and other media. From this data the government is praised or criticised by politicians, fortunes are made or lost on the stock market, business decisions are made and union officials try to predict the financial future for their members. This work describes the indicators and shows how they should be interpreted and can be manipulated. It discusses how we can all learn to isolate what is important, cut through the packaging, tell the difference between irrelevant blips and significant trends, and thus gain real insight into what is happening - and is likely to happen - in the real world.