Zerohedge reports on India’s central bank digging its hole deeper:
With the value of the rupee plunging to new lows, the current account deficit at an all-time high and inflation running at nearly a ten-percent annual clip, India is in serious economic trouble. Indeed many are beginning to wonder whether the country is edging toward a replay of the events in the summer of 1991. Back then, an acute balance of payments crisis forced New Delhi into the indignity of pawning its gold reserves in order to secure desperately needed international financing.
At a small public event the other week, Duvvuri Subbarao, the outgoing head of the central bank, pointedly referred to a recent book, This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, and conceded that policymakers rarely learn from their mistakes. He conceded that:
“… in matters of economics and finance, history repeats itself, not because it is an inherent trait of history, but because we don’t learn from history and let the repeat occur.”
This is a theme that policymakers have been pondering for a while. More than a year ago, at what was ostensibly a celebration of an updated book on the economic reforms catalyzed by the 1991 debacle, Subbarao warned that the dangers sparking that crisis – ballooning fiscal and current account deficits – were once again lurking. At the same time, a high-ranking commerce ministry official told a group of business leaders that economic indicators were provoking “a sense of déjà vu.” Worried that conditions were ripe for a replay of the 1991 crisis, he exclaimed:
“Why are we dodging these [policy challenges]? In 1991, we were candid enough to take these decisions. The quicker we take these decisions, the better it would be, instead of acting like ostriches.”
The reason is fairly simple. Men have a very difficult time understanding things when their continued financial well-being depends upon them failing to understand them.