Cooking the Books! lies and big lies in Argentina and in the UK

This week's edition of The Economist brings a strong attack to Argentina's government, responsible for publishing "inflation figures that almost nobody believes" and threatening economists who dare to disagree with the government. With the headlines "Don't lie to me, Argentina" and "The price of cooking the books", the magazine accuses the president, Cristina Fernandez Kirchner, of promoting expansionary policies and to deceive the public to conceal the rise. It argues that: "Since 2007, when Guillermo Moreno, the secretary of internal trade, was sent into the statistics institute, INDEC, to tell its staff that their figures had better not show inflation shooting up, prices and the official record have parted ways". Argentina has been criticised by the American Statistics Association for political persecution and by the IMF and the UN. But nothing seems to embarrass the Argentines.We are perhaps seeing the lowest side of weak democracies in Latin America that should not offer much reason for surprise. Good that respectable international magazines are here to let us know about these failed states, right?

Not really. The problem seems much bigger than The Economist suggested. For instance, today, Monday 27 February, The Times published a report telling how two Cabinet Ministers and one senior adviser of David Cameron drew up a plan to stop monitoring child poverty in the UK. Their fears is that Britain's official child poverty measure should produce a string of bad headlines for the Government in the following months. Oficially they argue that the measure that classifies children living in poverty as those living in households that are on 60% of Britain's median income is too crude and arbitrary. This measure suggests that further 100.000 children should be below the child poverty line in the near future. But, as The Times reports, "A compromise over child poverty has now been reached within the coalition. The income measure will be retained, but others will be added to created a more 'nuanced' picture of child poverty in Britain."

So, what are the main differences between Argentina and the UK? Well, indeed, the current situation in Argentina seems to be much worse because it involves threats, harassment and violation of basic human rights.That is very different from the situation in the UK. But both their attempts to 'cook the books', providing figures that will be used to hide negative aspects of their policies seem to share the same spirit.

Now, it would be terribly unfair to single out Argentina and the UK as if they were the only countries in the world trying to 'fiddle the figures'. This seems to be common practice among governments and it is only through strong civil societies that governments can be named and shamed for their attempts to hide the impact of their policies and public statistics. Can you think of any other countries in the world right now where governments are trying to cook the books?