Persian parellels...

...thank goodness I live in a country where efforts like this are not repressed. Draw your own conclusions regarding the time and investment involved and why the below is necessary.

That being said, all eyes on Iran at the moment. As Stalin put it "he who votes decides nothing, he who counts the votes decides everything".

By Pat Boyle

Wednesday June 10 2009

A top economist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT) in the United States is close to finalising a new index which will change the way countries measure inflation and allow it to be done on a daily basis, a conference in Dublinheard yesterday.

Roberto Rigobon, professor of applied economics at the MIT Sloan Business School, has for the past few years been collecting price data from major retailers including Tesco,Ikea and Wal-Mart. He has also compiled indexes of property price changes around the globe as he bids to assemble a new measure of inflation which will replace existing measures using daily instead of monthly bulletins on price changes.

The detailed work involves collating millions of price changes daily and will allow Prof Rigobon to issue accurate data on inflation on a daily basis in countries around the globe, including Ireland.

He said existing inflation measures were unreliable and that his new measure would also allow economists and other researchers access to almost unlimited price data.

Prof Rigobon says he will insist that all information used to compile the release are made available to researchers, which is currently not the case with official inflation statistics.

- Pat Boyle