The price of truth. Finance, misinformation and the battle for reality

ARIS KOMPOROZOS-ATHANASIOU, Director UCL Centre for Capitalism Studies, University College London gives a talk about:

How did truth lose its grip? Why do citizens reject experts, doubt science, fall for conspiracies, and elect authoritarian populists? Scientists, journalists, and former political leaders offer a familiar warning. If facts collapse into fictions, the marketplace of ideas, and democracy itself, cannot survive. The usual remedy is to fix the information system: more fact-checking, stronger institutions, renewed expert authority. This lecture makes a more radical claim. To understand the present truth crisis, we must confront the role of finance. Today’s markets trade not only in money but also in truth. From venture capital to cryptocurrency tokens, from Exchange Traded Funds to hedge-fund algorithms, finance reshapes credibility and redefines what counts as real. It leverages volatility to project uncertain futures into

the present, sustain conflicting narratives, and inject a “fake it till you make it” logic into political life. These dynamics reach far beyond trading floors to shape how democratic institutions, policymakers, and citizens assess credibility and navigate instability. The price of truth, in other words, is being set through finance. Seen in this light, the lecture reframes the challenge of democratic repair in an age of populism. It argues for institutions built to govern uncertainty rather than chase it, and asks how reclaiming the price of truth can renew the very foundations of democracy.