Tyranny of numbers

I have not been able to write much on this blog because I have been trying to catch up on my research.  But the rial troubles in the last two weeks have been impossible to ignore.  I am not a macro economist, but some of what the media was reporting about the freefall of the rial even I knew was over-sensationalized — hyperinflation, economic collapse… and one Iranian BBC reporter said he had run out of words to describe it!  Yesterday I tried to explain on the lobelog three things. (more…)