Then, a few months before he took over, India was hit by a serious financial crisis, as US Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke hinted that he would begin to throttle back America’s quantitative easing effort, the multi-trillion-dollar cash-printing machine that had helped to stave off the worst of the global crisis. Investors around the world panicked, pulling capital out of emerging markets and from India in particular, with its historically weak public finances and ominous current account deficit. India was suddenly plunged into its worst financial crisis since 1991: the rupee crashed,
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