Borrowed Time
Two Centuries of Booms, Busts, and Bailouts at Citi
James Freeman and Vern Mckinley
HarperCollins
384 pages; Rs 599
A massive problem of NPAs bedevils India's public sector banks currently. One of its major causes is the time-honoured practice of government-owned banks sanctioning loans to favoured corporate houses at the behest of their political masters. One would think that the banking sector of a developed economy like the United States would be better-run. The reader is quickly disabused of any such notion a few pages into this well-researched — and well-timed — history of Citi.
The US banking sector has been very prone to
