Indian Market Crash

Interesting that the day after I find and link to Tom Barnett’s The New Core pillars at risk (India) post, (which he authored on May 14th), the Indian stock market crashes.

According to Indian news outlet Rediff the exchanges have been closed and trading halted:

The Mumbai police soon arrived on the scene with three vans and feared that the situation would get out of control as the brokers were only shouting on top of their voices against Congress and arguing with reporters.

The policemen cleared Dalal Street after telling the brokers and reporters to get out from the BSE building.

Ramesh Bhojwani, another broker, was more angry with the capital market regulator — the Securities and Exchange Board of India — as it “did not intervene or do anything to stop the market from falling heaving, leading to suspension of trading twice.”

“Since morning Rs 3 lakh crore (Rs 3 trillion) has been lost and the government could not do anything. Everybody here wants to quit and run from this market. The Congress has senior leaders like Manmohan Singh, Pranab Mukherjee and P Chidambaram. They understand the markets but still they have not made any statement to prevent the fall of the Sensex,” cried Bhojwani.

And from Dr. Barnett’s post:

There’s nothing wrong with campaigning on behalf of the little people and making the case that they have to share in the opening up of India to the outside world as much as the high-tech and service-industry people have. But a return to the protectionism of the past would be a disaster for India, killing a lot of great economic connectivity built up with the outside world over the past decade.

India is a such a bell-weather state for globalization, so a close eye on this development is warranted.

Ugh.