India gets a new finance chief

India’s new Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had a cabinet in place today after days of wrangling within his multi-party coalition, with a Harvard-educated veteran appointed as finance minister.

Singh, a top economist who charted a pro-market turn in India’s socialist-style economy as finance minister from 1991 to 1996, did not take on the finance minister’s post himself as some observers speculated he would.