Kjetil Halvorsen writes:
This should be of interest for the blog: The leader of the Greece national statistics faces prison charges for telling the truth!
I followed the link, and my initial reaction was: Interesting–but I don’t think something appearing at that “Zero Hedge” site can be trusted! Did they ever apologize for this bit of misinformation?
Halvorsen replied:
I don’t know! But we do not need to trust zerohedge, here is financial times, also with more details.
Unfortunately the FT article has some sort of registration barrier, but I take exception to Tyler Durden’s snide remarks about “Banana Republics.”
Just search for [“Greece’s statistics chief”] (with the quotes). You’ll find the news articles, including the paywalled FT article, which will pop up if you navigate from a search engine (apparently they want search traffic, not link traffic).
Better than fiction. Reminds me of Argentina, which has done a serious job on its inflation numbers:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/07/argentina-vs-economists-toward-a-theory-of-e-barandiaran.html
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/11/sentences-to-ponder-32.html
If the FT article is behind a wall, that no large problem, since registration is free.
The FT article isn’t behind a paywall, but requires free registration. I’ve got a FT cookie saved (probably from reading Tim Harford), and it popped right up. It’s a bit frightening.
The statisticians/demographers who conducted the 1939 Soviet census were all arrested and imprisoned/shot. Turns out Stalin’s purges had depleted the population and they (accurately) reported that.
Dave Backus beat me to it. In Argentina the government fines with 100000+ USD any consulting company that reports an inflation index that differs from the one from the government.
Regards.
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