Gaga over Yaga

Yaga Venugopal Reddy, the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India from 2003-2008 is being credited as being the 'saviour of the Indian financial system' from the impact of the global meltdown (a newspaper articles' words, not mine!). The dude sure seems pretty prescient in hindsight, since he moved swiftly (and with little regard to the netas in the government, it must be noted) to quell what seems now to be an obvious bubble in real estate prices and unsecured credit by raising interest rates. No wonder the guy is in great demand as a speaker at various international fora on financial system stability and the role of central banks.

What Reddy did during his tenure seems all the more amazing now since at that time, it seemed quite a contrarian and rather obstinate thing to do. Indeed, if Greenspan had done what Reddy did, perhaps we would not have this catastrophe of a credit crunch on our hands and perhaps many millions of jobs would not be lost. It is therefore instructive to see what Reddy thinks now.

Interestingly enough, in an interview with Mint, he says: "that the underlying inflationary pressure in India is very high" and that "one should take into account the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and not the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) while taking monetary and fiscal measures. In contrast to WPI, the country’s most widely tracked weekly inflation index, CPI reflects the price of goods at the retail level. For the week ended 25 April, WPI inflation was 0.70%, but CPI for industrial workers continued to be high at 9.63%, for February 2009 (the latest available number)." Bang on!! I always laugh when I hear strange numbers each week on CNBC: Inflation is now 0.2%, now 0.5%!! Huh?? Nothing seems to be becoming cheaper (except petrol, the price of which was reduced in February), so how can this be?

He goes on to say "the challenge before the authorities is unwinding the packages in due course. Otherwise, vested interests (will) develop in some stimulus packages and that will add to the inflationary pressures." Further: "You cannot do recovery at any cost. Your recovery has to be at an appropriate price.” The guy is still being farsighted and rightly indentifies that the focus on blind copying of 'stimulus' by our government (for populist reasons perhaps? or for bailing out property 'developers' who really deserve to be bankrupt) could be sowing the seeds of future pain and degrowth in India.

I wish we had more courageous (and sensible!) people like Yaga at the helm of economic policymaking!