EmogInspiration

I have been listening to the news over the past week and there
seems to be a series of events that have been recurrent on the
news. It started with the food crisis a while ago and now its a
financial crisis that has moved around the globe causing untold
hardship and wide spread panic.

The US president signed a $700 billion bailout fund to help
save the US economy from an impending recession. This has
been as a result of a lot of top financial houses going under.
Former US president Bill Clinton traced the problem to the
early 90’s when there was a crisis in the stock market.

As a result of this crisis, investors needed a place to put in
funds. Real estate was the best and most dependable option.
A lot of money was pumped into real estate. With the recent
foreclosures a lot of people have lost their homes as a result
of inability to pay. The homes are less in value than they were
initially leaving the financial institutions in a loss.

He further emphasized that with the current financial crisis, the
United States has to reduce its dependence on oil and invest
in other sources of energy like wind, solar and nuclear energy.
This will in turn make jobs available, generate funds for the
Government and restore confidence of investors in the
economy.

The US is not the only country that is affected. The government
of Iceland announced that some of her financial institutions have
gone under. In Iceland, the economy is dominated by banks. The
stock market in Germany, Pakistan and even Dubai went down
a couple of points. The panic generated caused a slide in Asian
stocks. Japan stocks as at yesterday were at their lowest level
since 1987.

Britain was not left out. The British Chancellor announced an
$87.4 billion bailout plan for banks. One question comes to mind,
Is the World heading for a recession? Or could this be a repeat of
the great depression of the 1930’s. It actually started with the wall
street crash in October 1929. The market crash marked the
beginning of a decade of high unemployment, poverty, low profits,
deflation and lost opportunities for economic growth and personal
advancement in the United States and around the World.

Although its causes are still uncertain, the basic cause was a sudden
loss of confidence in the economic future. A friend of mine suggested
that rather than spend so much money bailing out banks, why not
spend money on getting the news agencies and print media to restore
investors confidence. I believe that if the fundamentals of the economy
are strong, this phase will gradually pass, because the drop in the
Asian market was as a result of panic.

Though the Nigerian stock market is down, we still have crude oil sales to
rely on. Though we are not producing as much as we ought to, we
still make a lot of money from crude oil sales. I believe that in spite
of every thing going on around, what I think in my heart is what I
will become. I choose to be positive and optimistic believing strongly
in the promises of God for me.