On misleading economic indicators: I'm not sure if this was posted recently, but Kevin Phillips had an article in Harpers, titled "Numbers Racket, Why the economy is worse than we know" (subscription only) of which an shorter (?) version can be found here,  and a summary here) in which he shows that the public measures of the US economy's state do not show what they say they show. This is well-charted territory here at Eurotrib of course, but certainly it isn't generally widespread knowledge.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake