Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Don't like inflation numbers? Make them up.

I could have also titled this why countries stay poor/get poorer. From the Wall Street Journal (this link needs subscription but according to Richard in the comments, you might be able to access the same editorial at http://news.congoo.com):

Just when you think world economic policy might be moving in a more sensible direction, along comes Latin America. This month's lesson in how not to create prosperity comes from Argentina, which has decided that the way to whip inflation is to throw out inconvenient statistics.

Recently the Peronist government of President Nestór Kirchner sacked an official at its National Statistics and Census Institute for refusing to agree to alter the "methodology" used to calculate inflation in January. Armed guards then escorted a political appointee to replace her.

1 comment:

Rafael said...

Thank you for writing about Congoo! One of our partners just pointed out your comment. Several sites and blogs that have begun adopting the Netpass technology and NP icon to enable their readers to access subscription required articles. There is a simple way to do this which you can view here: http://www.congoo.com/netpassenabled

Congoo is planning a blog search and we’d like to include yours. We’ll also be featuring blogs and we’ll make sure to feature yours too. Thanks for the support.

Best Regards,

Rafael Cosentino