The global financial crisis, though catastrophic and devastating
in terms of magnitude, is not comparable to any unforeseen,
fortuitous or accidental natural calamities like Tsunami
or hurricane. Neither was it an overnight catastrophe that struck
any country or the world at large.
The so-called financial slowdown or meltdown started
several months before it gradually manifested itself as a monstrous
liquidity crisis, which of course finally became conspicuously transparent
in September 2008, with the sudden collapse of several US-based
financial/insurance giants like American International Group
(AIG), Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan and Merrill Lynch.
Though the said financial storm originated in United States
of America (USA) and Europe, it slowly engulfed most of the
vulnerable financial services network the world over, culminating in one
of the worst global financial crisis, the world has ever witnessed.
Ironically, the Superpower (US), which virtually holds remote control
on most of the world economies, could not have a proper control
mechanism in place on the operations of the aforesaid multinational
financial giants operating from its soil. Strictly speaking, it is the first
major financial turmoil of such magnitude and has been rightly
termed as `crisis of crises'—comprising of a multitude of crises like
financial crisis, credit crisis, liquidity crisis, currency crisis and subprime
mortgage crisis—only to name the predominant ones. |
