How do we know what's real?

Europe2020

http://www.europe2020.org

describes an epochal shift in the world economy, taking place before our eyes. During this time, the old economic indicators are unreliable, and what's worse, they have been doctored by large-scale intervention so that they say what we want to believe. Below from their May 15 post:

"Of course, everyone is free to think that a few points’ monthly variation of a particular economic or financial indicator, itself largely affected by the multiple interventions of public authorities and banks, carries much more value on the evolution of the current crisis than those stepping out of century-old referential frameworks. Everyone is also free to believe that those who anticipated neither the crisis nor its intensity are now in a position to know the precise date when it will end.

Our team advises them to go see (or see again) the movie Matrix [5] and to think about the consequences of manipulating the sensors and indicators of one’s perception of given environment. Indeed, as we will examine in detail in our special summer 2009 GEAB (N°36), the coming months could be entitled « Crisis Reloaded » [6]"