Never mind the numbers, they declared: immediate spending cuts were needed to ward off the "bond vigilantes," investors who would pull the plug on spendthrift governments, driving up their borrowing costs and precipitating a crisis.
Singh presided over a rapidly expanding economy, but rising fuel costs precipitated a marked increase in inflation that threatened the government's ability to provide subsidies for the country's poor.
While natural gas prices have plummeted to 10-year lows, heating oil prices have been steadily rising for years and are expected to reach record levels this winter, precipitated by higher costs for crude oil and the shutdown of several crucial refineries in the Northeast and in Europe.
Ireland had to bear most of the cost of the bailout by itself, precipitating a national debt crisis from which it is still recovering.
In central Africa, a genocidal war has raged for nearly a decade, costing more than four million lives in Rwanda, Burundi and Congo and precipitating the worst humanitarian crisis in more than half a century.
For the Texans, the loss to New England precipitated a funk that cost them the No. 1 seed in the A.F.C., a first-round bye and home-field advantage.
And when I articulated this problem as the NASA executive in charge of its science program and consistently curtailed cost increases, I found myself eventually admonished and then neutered by still higher ups, precipitating my resignation earlier this year.
Her father died early, precipitating family poverty.
There was absolutely no precipitating anything.
Paying treatment costs for complete strangers would jeopardize the health-care provider's profit-and-loss statements, resulting in financial losses and precipitating shareholder revolts that could help engender disbelief in our economic system and the American Way.
