This

is what I said, and one of the other speakers - very influential, - who heard me last October was also advocating "unitisation" in his presentation. He it was who said that you cannot solve 21st Century problems with 20th Century solutions.

More to the point I talked to one of the deputies (to the CEO, and a very sophisticated and switched on man) of one of the state corporations, and he told me that they had recently had financing presentations from Iran's only investment banks (a relatively recent arrival, and entirely conventional in their approach). The proposed deficit-based financing was laughed at as being entirely impractical.

So, post Lehman, the trend in Iran to the Western economic model - still at an early stage - has come to a dead halt.

For the last few months, though, everything has stopped, and I don't see any chance of progress (for my work) now til the autumn at the earliest.

The news I heard (this morning) out of Iran is of momentous events. In particular, the middle classes and women are mobilising in a way reminiscent of recent events in Iceland.

There is no going back to the way things were, it appears, but things are extremely fluid.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson