The Global Financial Crisis

Abstract

The global financial crisis which brought in its wake a slow down in the wheel of international economy, loss of value in national currencies and money markets, should not be addressed on a face value by just making America the scape goat for the incidences and the consequences, if a pragmatic way forward is to be proffered.Since all nations do not operate on the same financial pedestal, each country’s case should be analyzed on the basis of her own financial peculiarities and framework.The global economic meltdown is an aftermath of the global financial crisis that manifested as the consequence of financial management indiscipline in different parts of the world including the United states of America. The main crux of the global financial crisis which boomerang to the worst economic recession since the end of the Second World War, particularly considering the extent of its negative global economic ravaging, was the issue of gross disregard of financial systems across the globe to the observance of the international standard practice of ethics and professionalism; in financial management, more importantly in the special area of the business of bank lending and credit administration. Financial institutions become carefree and greedy for cheap profit making, they therefore throw all cautions to the wind. Financial institutions on the one hand, disregard regulatory check’s and balances for disciplinary controls and effective management. Regulatory authorities on the other hand, particularly in developing countries only do a slip-shoddy, half measure regulatory job that leaves some crucial sections of the financial system including banks and other financial institutions, the capital and bonds markets improperly supervised or uncovered in the regulatory and supervision programme. The financial system business-process gradually derailed and technically failed endangering investors’ funds and retarding economic development. Ultimately the economic system which is dependent on the financial system world wide installmentally deteriorated in the course of the economic meltdown. A chronology of the causes and effects of the financial crisis and ultimately the economic meltdown is assessed in the first part, the second part traces the genesis of economic meltdown within the last decade to the present; the third part looked critically at the effect of the global financial crisis on the Nigerian economy and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals in Nigeria; the final part of the article reviewed the uninformed and ignorant opinion of certain self styled analysts who accused the United States of America as the source and the cause of the economic meltdown.The unguarded opinion that the Nigerian financial system, including the capital market possesses some very unique, strong and imperturbable economic shock absorbers that can never allow the economic meltdown affect Nigeria and how Nigeria, despite the global meltdown suddenly became the economic haven for investors from all parts of the world. Unfortunately in the midst of these baseless and uninformed opinions all over the information media, the Nigeria capital market lost N500billion of its capitalization value in just one week. The final part of the article prescribed the way forward out of the crisis.