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Combating inflation - the Papa Hari Way

Filed under: Humour and Nonsense by Hari
Posted on Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 09:42 IST (last updated: Tue, Jul 15, 2008 @ 09:44 IST)

Papa Hari News Service

Sending out a strong message in the face of high rates of inflation triggered by rising oil and food prices across the world, the Papa Hari World Government announced that a committee of eminent mathematicians has been created in order to study and discuss the issue in a more scientific and practical way. Announcing the innovatively titled "New Plan To Combat Inflation" project, the spokesperson of the Papa Hari World Government hinted that the best method to prevent inflation would be to resort to simple mathematical formulae rather than depend on wannabe Nobel-prize winning economists who spin fuzzy, impractical theories to support their dubious doctorate theses.

"The best way to contain inflation is by tackling it head on... not by resorting to confusing jargon like National Income, GDP, GNP, fiscal deficit, budget, trade deficit, foreign exchange, foreign reserve or interest rates. The man on the street just doesn't care for such terms," said the spokesperson, "Therefore, the Papa Hari World Government has decided to hand over the problem to mathematicians who are known to be much more practical and down-to-earth than economists."

Stating that the committee has already started doing good work, the spokesman added that a few excellent ideas have been floated by the committee and the Papa Hari World Government would be seriously looking at these concepts. "One of the best ideas that has been proposed by the committee is to use the formula Inflation/Inflation = 1 (which means inflation divided by itself). This would instantly lead to a steady but low rate of inflation which is excellent for the economy."

Combating Inflation Among other formulae suggested by the mathematical committee, one of them is to use the sine or cosine of the value of inflation as the actual inflation rate. Eminent Indian mathematician, Alangaputhur Raghavachari said, "If we used the formula cos (inflation), we will always get a value of between -1 and 1. This is an excellent way to ensure that inflation and deflation values never go beyond 1% overall. And just think of the additional benefits: "Cos" sounds very much like "cause." By finding out the cos (inflation), most lay people would believe that we've found the cause of inflation. sin (inflation) was also considered as an alternative formula, but it doesn't make much sense to say "sign of inflation" when we can use cos instead." Yet another formula proposed was the square root of inflation, but it was dismissed as being ineffective with larger numbers. "What if inflation reaches 10000? The square root of 10,000 is 100. It's still a very high figure and would be unsustainable, right?" argued Raghavachari very reasonably. Mathematicians also dismissed Inflation - Inflation = 0 as being too simplistic and unrealistic.

In spite of the optimism expressed by the World Government, many remain sceptical of these ideas. "This kind of number jugglery seems to be just the kind of gimmicks that discount stores offering up to 50% off resort to," said a housewife when asked for her reaction to the measures of the government. "Everything will remain on paper... it's all an eyewash!" said a journalist while washing his blackened eye after getting into an argument with a wrestler over the issue.

Most people across the world continue crying over rising prices of food and fuel while the mathematicians work furiously towards a solution destined to change the course of the global economy forever. A prominent statistician who wished to remain anonymous, smugly assured this publication that the efforts of the committee would prove futile. "What can these mathematical geniuses do which we cannot? We've been doing the same kind of number jugglery for hundreds of years now, albeit with statistics instead of trignometry. And now, these new kids on the block think that they have the solution! How foolish!" he said with a pitying smile. Rather irrelevantly, George W. Bush assured every American that the future generation of kids would get free education and plenty of credit cards.

12 comment(s)

  1. Papa Hari's take on Unclear sorry nuclear deal next?

    Comment by Shrinidhi Hande (visitor) on Thu, Jul 17, 2008 @ 09:23 IST #
  2. I don't think so, Shrinidhi. Thanks for your comment. Been waiting a while for the first comment on this article :>>

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Thu, Jul 17, 2008 @ 09:25 IST #
  3. How about some deflation? Engineers might be needed!

    Comment by Tim (visitor) on Thu, Jul 17, 2008 @ 09:47 IST #
  4. Tim, as per the cos(inflation) formula, you're guaranteed to get a value of between -1 and 1, so deflation as well as inflation will occur randomly. :>>

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Thu, Jul 17, 2008 @ 09:55 IST #
  5. another idea-divide inflation by number of people in the country... we'll get a very negligible inflation

    Comment by Shrinidhi Hande (visitor) on Thu, Jul 17, 2008 @ 12:09 IST #
  6. Shrinidhi, the mathematicians have rejected the formula as being too statistically oriented. ;)

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Thu, Jul 17, 2008 @ 14:02 IST #
  7. Excellent post friend...great stuff...

    there is no SIGN of Inflation and its COS of Inflation...

    that's genius....

    Comment by UTP (visitor) on Fri, Jul 18, 2008 @ 20:03 IST #
  8. UTP, thanks a lot. How did you discover my site, by the way? Just curious. :>>

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Fri, Jul 18, 2008 @ 21:24 IST #
  9. you are one of those people who freak out when strangers visit right? even though deep down inside you think...wow...I must be doing something good that people come...

    I ll let you in on a secret...dont ask somebody where he came from...just be happy...and keep commenting on people's blogs....you ll be amazed...how much traffic you can generate....

    of course you got to write good posts...:) Cheers mate...

    Comment by UTP (visitor) on Sat, Jul 19, 2008 @ 11:24 IST #
  10. I asked because I was curious and genuinely happy to get comments from new sources. Nothing more or less. Of course I'm happy to get new people commenting on my blog - I just wonder where they come from, sometimes. So thanks again for commenting. I don't get "freaked out" by new commenters. I am somebody who is genuinely happy at new referrals and want to know who helped me get more traffic. So if you don't want to share that information with me, I am not worried. :)

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Sat, Jul 19, 2008 @ 14:03 IST #
  11. My, my... Being in development work, i find this very useful and enlightening... Can you sort out the problems of world poverty this way?

    Comment by Bungi (visitor) on Tue, Aug 5, 2008 @ 19:09 IST #
  12. Of course, bungi... just multiply everybody's wealth by a factor of 10^7 after adding one to their current wealth (in case the current wealth is 0 which would make the formula useless) :p

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Tue, Aug 5, 2008 @ 19:58 IST #

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