Every day we are bombarded with facts and figures on the economy - things like the improving budget deficit, the growth in GDP, a rise in the RPI and a new round of quantitative easing. What does it all mean and does it matter? Given that economists spend years studying and trying to understand the economy – and very often fail to predict what is going to happen, or why what has happened, happened – Volume 17 of Acuity attempts only to provide some insights into how the economy works in very broad brush terms and what lies behind some of the numbers and concepts bandied around by the media.