The whole world is nursing the aftermaths of the deadly monster that put the world into financial economic confusion. This year, on Thursday 9 August 2012, the group of Occupy Wall Street movement took to the streets to commemorate, the day that the world woke up to one of the most terrifying financial crisis. They blamed the government for showing minimal efforts to hold accountable those who might have contributed to this deadly monster. But still everybody is still struggling to find out who, in the real sense, is responsible for this financial mess.
Financial institutions have received blame on this matter. The financial institutions such as banks and insurance companies did encourage the citizens to purchase homes with loans from the banks. Whether they were able to afford them or not was not a big deal since insurance companies assured them of cover against their property. Homeowners also believed that homeownership was an investment and not an expense to be incurred and so spent a lot of money in the investment, including loans from banks.
With time, homeowners found themselves in a crisis since the mortgage debts became too much for them. As if this was not enough, the financial institutions introduced easy credit cards which made consumers to borrow above what they could afford. In the long run, consumers lost control over their own finances since they could not repay their debts. However, banks ended up auctioneering homes and property of borrowers. This caused most business enterprises to close down. People lost their jobs and life became too expensive with high inflation rates.
The US government also contributed to the financial crisis. In reality, the financial crisis can be dated way back in 1960s when the government decided to use a lot of taxpayer’s money to establish “a military- Industrial complex”. The establishment of powerful military arms to protect the country from outside threat is a key to the peace of our nation. However, this undertaking was too expensive to the taxpayers. The former president George W. Bush catalyzed the current financial crisis by spending a lot of taxpayers’ money on military defense and neglecting the negative impacts of his actions to the US and global economy.
In 2008, we elected president Obama with high hopes that he would reverse the trend through his bright ideas that targeted economic revitalization. This was not the case. As much as we thank his administration for disorienting Taliban and cracking down Al-Qaeda, we must acknowledge that he has done this at the expense of the taxpayers’ money. His administration invested less on economic stimulus projects that would reduce imports and increase export index of America.
The corporate sector can also be pointed to in the search for the roots of the present financial situation. When former president, George W. Bush was nearly signing out of the office, financial corporation’s urged his government to begin practicing socialist taxpayer bail- out. Tax payer bail-out has contributed much to the financial crisis since it led to the crumbling down of some major companies. President Obama also promoted the taxpayer bail-outs especially on the auto industries such as General Motors Company. However, taxpayer bail- outs only raised the cost of living since commodity prices escalated to greater heights than usual.
In conclusion, individuals, financial institutions, government and corporate sectors have contributed much to the current financial crisis in US. Corporate sectors encouraged taxpayer bail-outs, financial institutions encouraged consumers to take loans which they could not afford to pay back, and government spends much on military defense. Therefore, all of us are responsible for the financial crisis in our country. Hence it is appropriate to own up and find ways to seal all loopholes that might again lead us to this great deadly monster.
