Insurance delivered the second body blow, rising by 50to150percentent in Ms. Arougheti's estimation, and in some cases, more.
A surge in exports softened the blow: they rose by a quarter in the first half of 2012, to around 66m tonnes.
Europe is also spared some of the urgency felt in the United States because of the Continent's stronger social safety net, which provides universal health care and other government-supported services, softening the blow of rising unemployment.
We already knew that action was being taken on energy bills, with the government announcing on Monday it would change environmental requirements and pay a rebate to all customers to soften the blow of rising prices.
Mr. Ahmadinejad has been pressuring Parliament to increase the monthly cash distributions given to most Iranians to help cushion the blow of rising prices, which have been caused in part by his effort to phase out subsidies on food and fuels.
The inflation rate is nearly 20%, overtaking national wage increases meant to soften the blow of rising food and consumer goods costs.
For those living near the tracks, that is probably still long enough to "hear the whistle blowing, rise up so early in the morn".
Much of the fixed-income world has been smarting from the blow of sharply rising long-term rates ever since Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, raised the possibility in May that the Fed was considering tapering its stimulus spending.
To cushion the blow, the quotas are rising by 1% a year, before they expire in 2015.
He softened the blow by delaying this year's rise until September but there is no getting away from the fact that the 2p a litre rise he promised for the next two years is well ahead of inflation and shows the government keen to make up for the duty freezes of recent years.
