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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Economy & business fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about economy & business. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

7,096 published reviews in this topic

Fact Crescendo Sri LankaEconomy & business

2017 ලංකාවේ පැවති ඉන්ධන හිඟය පිළිබඳ නොමඟ යවන සුළු සටහන් පෙළක්!

Publisher’s rating: Missing Context

The posts presented a photograph of motorcycles queued at a fuel station as a scene from Sri Lanka’s fuel shortage on 4 November 2017. The review reports that its reverse-image search traced the photograph to Ahmedabad, western India, rather than Sri Lanka. It identifies the scene as having occurred on 23 May 2012, when motorcyclists gathered at a fuel station ahead of a petrol-price increase. Thus, the photograph does not establish what the 2017 Sri Lankan queues looked like. The review also checked the context of the 2017 shortage separately. It says a Hiru News report described queues across the island and some fuel stations being closed, attributing the situation in part to an imported IOC fuel shipment being judged substandard. The review adds that a BBC Sinhala report described several contributing factors: rejection of a fuel shipment, motorists buying and storing extra petrol amid fears of a shortage, and speculation about possible price changes in the forthcoming budget. It notes that diesel and kerosene were not reported to be in short supply. The distinction is that the 2017 shortage was real, but the circulated image was miscaptioned: the review’s conclusion identifies it as a photograph from Ahmedabad in 2012, not a photograph of Sri Lanka during the 2017 shortage. The review also reports that on 21 November 2017 the Petroleum Ministry said there was no fuel shortage at that time and urged people not to be misled by false reports; that later statement does not change the photograph’s earlier provenance.

dpaEconomy & business

Le PDG de Moderna quitte Twitter et vend pour 400 millions de dollars de ses actions.

Publisher’s rating: Stéphane Bancel vend régulièrement certaines des actions qu’il détient dans Moderna. Il agit de la sorte depuis plusieurs années, et ces transactions sont programmées des mois à l’avance : il n’y a donc rien qui lie cela à une actualité particulière. De plus, ces ventes ne concernent qu’une infime partie de ses actions. Quant à son compte Twitter, celui-ci était inactif depuis 2019. En ce qui concerne Noubar Afeyan, sa dernière vente d’actions remonte à mars 2021.

The claim combined two events involving Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel: that he sold $400 million of company shares and that he deleted his Twitter account. The review examined both the timing and scale of the share transactions and the account’s activity. It reports that the $400 million figure did not describe a single recent sale: “Ces affirmations sont apparues à la mi-février 2022.” The transactions it identified immediately beforehand were planned sales of 19,000 shares on February 2 and 9, valued at $3.1 million and $2.9 million, respectively. To check the larger figure, the review examined Bancel’s reported transactions and explained that the amount may have come from the cumulative value of sales since November 2019, rather than a recent lump-sum sale. It also reports that Bancel’s sales followed plans established under the US Rule 10b5-1 mechanism, with plans dating to December 2018. In a February 15, 2022 interview with BFMTV, Bancel said he had automatic sales each Wednesday and Thursday since 2019. The review says the two recent sales were a small fraction of the more than 21 million shares it reported he still owned. The Twitter part of the claim also lacked the suggested implication of a sudden departure tied to current events. The account had disappeared by February 9, 2022, but an archived version showed it was still operating on January 24. The review says Bancel’s last tweets dated to 2019 and quotes him telling BFMTV that he had not used Twitter since then. It therefore distinguishes the recent account closure from the account’s long inactivity.

Fact Crescendo Sri LankaEconomy & business

‘මල් වඩමක’ මිල රුපියල් 10,000 දක්වා ඉහළට ?

Publisher’s rating: Misleading

The review examined social-media posts claiming that a funeral wreath formerly priced at Rs. 2,500 had risen to Rs. 10,000, reportedly because of the organic-fertilizer problem. It investigated whether Rs. 10,000 was in fact the minimum price, rather than whether any wreath could cost that much. The review notes that prices varied with the flowers, quantity, design and quality used. For price evidence, the review describes checking a Hiru news report published on January 16. That report attributed higher prices for floral arrangements to reduced flower harvests amid a chemical-fertilizer shortage. The review says the report described arrangements previously sold for about Rs. 1,500 being sold for about Rs. 3,000, and one seller put the current minimum funeral-wreath price at about Rs. 3,000, compared with Rs. 1,500 earlier. The review also says it contacted staff at Mahinda Flower Shop, who gave that business’s minimum wreath price as Rs. 5,000 and said some wreaths could exceed Rs. 10,000 depending on their composition. Other flower shops reportedly said prices depended on flower type and quantity; they gave Rs. 2,500 as a minimum for wreaths made only with daisies. Thus the evidence supports increased flower and arrangement prices, but not the post’s presentation of Rs. 10,000 as the minimum. The review concludes that the posts were misleading.

המשרוקיתEconomy & business

אני יודע שיש הרבה יותר התחלות בנייה מאשר מה שהיה בשנתיים האחרונות

Publisher’s rating: לא נכון ברובו

The claim concerns Yair Lapid’s February 16, 2022 interview on Kan 11, in which he said there were “many more” housing starts than in the previous two years. The review distinguishes housing starts—the beginning of a building’s foundation excavation—from other stages in construction and says the latest available Central Bureau of Statistics figures then covered starts through September 2021. It also notes that initially published starts data are revised upward over time, so the full-year 2021 figures were not yet available. To compare like periods, the review used two approaches: the first nine months of each year, and the 12 months ending in September. In the first comparison, there were about 41,000 starts in 2021, versus about 39,000 in 2020 and 40,000 in 2019. In the rolling-year comparison, the totals were 56,000 for October 2020–September 2021, 54,000 for October 2019–September 2020, and 57,000 for October 2018–September 2019. Thus, one comparison showed a slight increase, but the other showed fewer starts in the period Lapid was discussing than in the earlier period; neither supported “many more.” The review reports that Lapid’s spokesperson directed it to land marketing figures, a different and earlier stage of the process. Those figures did rise substantially: 102,000 housing units were marketed in 2021, compared with 56,000 in 2019 and 51,000 in 2020. The review also distinguishes building permits from starts and marketing: by September 2021, about 48,000 permits had been issued, compared with 54,000 during all of 2020. Its conclusion is that the claim about starts overstated the change, while the much larger increase applied to marketed land.

dpaEconomy & business

De CEO van Moderna geeft zijn ontslag, verkoopt 400 miljoen aan aandelen en verwijderde zijn Twitter. Verschillende leden van de Raad van Bestuur van Moderna gaven eveneens ontslag en het aandeel van Moderna (en dat van Pfizer) is recent gekelderd.

Publisher’s rating: De CEO van Moderna, Stéphane Bancel vervult nog steeds zijn functie en verkocht legaal een fractie van zijn aandelen maar bleef ruimschots onder de 400 miljoen. Zijn Twitterprofiel doekte hij effectief op. Er is geen enkele bekendmaking dat een een of meerdere leden van de raad van bestuur opstapten. Het aandeel van Moderna zakte de laatste weken wel in waarde.

המשרוקיתEconomy & business

נחנו נמצאים במקום הרביעי במערכות הפנסיה בעולם בדירוג שנעשה על ידי החברה הבינלאומית מרסר… בדמי הניהול בהשוואה ל-OECD אנחנו המדינה הזולה ביותר

Publisher’s rating: נכון ברובו

The review examines remarks by Dr. Moshe Bareket, then head of Israel’s Capital Market, Insurance and Savings Authority, during a Knesset discussion about the maximum management fees pension funds may charge retirees. Bareket said Israel ranked fourth worldwide in Mercer’s pension-system assessment and had the lowest fees compared with the OECD. The review finds support for both statements, but explains that the fee comparison is narrower than the wording might suggest. For the fee claim, the review describes the OECD’s comparison method: it divides pension funds’ management-fee income by the assets they manage, producing a percentage that can be compared across countries. The latest comparison discussed uses 2020 data. After adding Israeli figures collected by the Capital Market Authority and supplied to the OECD, the review reports that Israel’s fee income was 0.41% of assets, second-lowest behind Costa Rica at 0.32%. Thus, Israel was among the cheapest in that comparison, but was not the cheapest. The review also places the result in context: the 2020 comparison covered 14 countries in the OECD publication, plus Israel, while the OECD has 38 member countries. An earlier comparison using 2016 data covered 25 countries and placed Israel fifth, at 0.63%. The investigation therefore supports the broad characterization of low Israeli fees, while qualifying the claim of being the cheapest and the breadth of the international comparison. Separately, the review reports that Mercer’s 2021 assessment did place Israel fourth worldwide. That assessment evaluated pension systems in 43 countries using more than 50 indicators. The two rankings concern different measures: Mercer assessed pension-system quality, while the OECD comparison measured management-fee income relative to assets.