Opinion | Fake news, cooked books and declining trust – who can we believe when markets and politics corrupt each other?

As the year draws to an end, 2018 was not a year of living dangerously, as most of us want more than ever to live a quiet life. The year has also not been easy for any leader, as British Prime Minister Theresa May knows all too well. 

Since the great recession of 2008, competition has been a race to the bottom in almost every sphere, especially politics. As competition guru Michael Porter wrote last year, “competition in the politics industry is failing America”. Polarisation in the United States stems from the two parties trying to outdo each other by distorting the rules of the game in their favour through gerrymandering, political funding and putting partisan interests above public interest.

The capture of party politics by vested interests has corrupted democratic governance across the world, with growing discontent from rising social inequality. When the politicians responded to the global financial crisis of 2008 by letting off bad bankers and instead printing more money, the result was rising asset prices and even greater social polarisation. Once technology and migration threatened jobs, the populist vote for change moved further to both the right and left.

The Edelman Trust Barometer, which is an online survey in 28 markets with 33,000 respondents, suggested that in 2017 trust was in crisis and in 2018, there was “the battle for truth”.

Interestingly enough, among the general population, trust in institutions (non-governmental organisations, business, government and media) was highest in China, Indonesia and India, whereas trust in the US institutions has fallen 9 percentage points from 52 per cent to 43 per cent. The decline in trust in US institutions is even steeper among the informed public, falling from 68 per cent to 45 per cent. US trust in the media broke down along party lines, with only 27 per cent of Donald Trump voters trusting the media, as opposed to 61 per cent of Hillary Clinton voters.