At its peak, hundreds of firms across the country were making something like two million bicycles a year, which was an astonishing number at the time given the primitive state of mass production.

FORBES: A Comic Look At The 1890s Bicycle Boom

The Central Bank of Iraq recently broadened the range of tactics it uses to mop up excess liquidity in the system and maintain the dinar's de facto peg to the dollar, which, given the primitive state of Iraq's financial system, is the best mechanism the bank has to keep prices stable.

ECONOMIST: Struggling to pick up the pieces | The