I think it might be worse than superficial. They're trying to trick readers into thinking that it contains more information than it does. Not cricket, Economist.

It's been working fine for decades! Even through enormous bad calls like their early noughties call on oil.

Happens in every field. Compare what is said to reported or if you have knowledge of something, frankly could be anything sports, business etc, how poorly it's reported in the press.

As a subscriber, I’d say this is very standard for the Economist.

No, this is entirely typical of The Economist. Everything I ever read there is amateurish and superficial.