The Great Desi Soothsayers

Even as I was defending Manmohan and Chidambaram, they themselves are making bogus claims now - that they actually foresaw the coming downturn and put deficit spending in place!!

Singh said he and Finance Minister P Chidambaram had anticipated a global slowdown on the horizon and budgeted for a very substantial amount of deficit to take care of the slack that has emerged now. “The fact that we have given record prices to the producers of wheat and rice; that Rs 71,000 crore worth loans have been written off... We have a very extensive programme for social service and infrastructure expansion,” he said.

“So, as far as our economy is concerned, I think, our fiscal stimulus is already on,” he said.

May be it's even larger than the Chinese $586 billion spending plan! (To be fair, the vast majority of Chinese spending plan is similar to Messers Manmohan and Chidambaram's - preexisting deficit spending plans!) What would we do without these great fortune tellers.