Hopefully, my response isn't going be that long winded
Thanks for the reply. I was trying to understand your thinking behind what I honestly perceived as hypocrisy. I actually didn't mean to question "why" you were asking for methodologies but my whole point was to raise a question about your premise that "surely the numbers must be lower than are reported". Correct me if I'm wrong but your statement didn't actually claim nor show that you had done extensive research on methodologies.
With that said, keeping inflation numbers artificially low is a matter I don't intend to debate on. Whether I think Argentina should have an option C that it should adopt or not is not really the issue, they can keep doing A or B but until they get their own house in order one thing after another is going to screw the people of Argentina over. Regardless of what INDEC publishes. I am of the opinion that Argentine politicians, trying to sell pipe dreams and utopia to the people, were the ones got Argentina in this mess and if they can't be honest while they claim they're trying to solve the mess (its the same people, with the same values, trying to pretend to be different), then I don't have much hope that anything will get resolved. Hence methodologies really lose meaning when one gets down to the basics.
INDEC has never admitted to falsifying inflationary data, neither have they admitted to jimmying the GDP growth numbers, its the people from outside the government that do it (e.g. Di Tella university). Besides, magic economic statistics are nothing new. China has basically mastered the art. The Economist and World Bank (whatever you may think of the magazine and the institution) don't publish GDP and inflation figures for Argentina either. Its the
whole institution that is INDEC that is untrustworthy, not just their inflation figures. Inflation figures are always in the media because that's what people understand the most and talk about.
You made a comparison with an NYT story. Should everything from NYT be disregarded because of one false story? It depends. Are all or most of their stories proven to be false? And do they double down on false stories and keep promoting them as true even after it has been made clear that their stories are false? If the answer to my questions is "Yes", then yes, I would disregard everything coming out of NYT. But it is a flawed comparison still.
For example, INDEC was one of the most trustworthy institutions in Latin America when it came to statistics before 2007. Then Kirchners decided to f*** it all up. So I would still trust the numbers pre 2007 but I'd be weary of all the numbers post 2007 until the administration changes and until the honesty at INDEC is restored.
With that said, I'll reiterate that I wasn't questioning you asking about methodologies (Enron and Madoff had methodologies too, grand ones at that). I was just pointing out, what I thought to be, hypocrisy.