By now everybody has felt the financial repercussions of the economic slowdown has hit virtually every economy in the world. From the glorified companies on Wall Street to the financial capitals of Europe to the poor families on the streets. Everyone is facing hard and difficult times financially

In relation to this many of us are wondering how did this mess begin in the first place and more often then not the usual answer was GREED. Yes a human emotion of wants and needs is cited as THE cause for the crisis that we face today. A very simple answer for a very complicated problem which I still find it hard to believe or to even comprehend. After all it is very hard to comprehend how the vague concept of human greed can effect us all financially. However on a closer look on how greed affects the ACTIONS of individual's and companies, it is not such a far fetched idea after all. I do not claim to be an expert on how the the global economy work nor I claim that I am all knowing about the fundamental economic forces that govern the financial system of countries around the world. I however would like to give my two cents on what the green eye monster role in this mess.


1. Mortage lenders - Mortage lenders in the past and especially in the United States were being greedy and will willingly give out mortages to people that did not have the ability to pay back those loans that they use to pay for their property. To make thing worse the lenders charge high interest rates despite knowing that their clients can't pay for the loan consoling themselves with the fact if their clients can't pay for the loan they could just reposes the house or property. So basically the greed of mortage lenders lead to many people live in homes that they could never afford to live the first place and the seeds of the financial crisis were sown.


2. Complicated Financial Instruments - My uncle once jokingly said that in todays economic crsis is all caused to due to the MBA guys in Havard creating absurdly complicated fianancial instruments. He also add that finace industry today is a lot more mind bogling compared to the industry in 1980's etc. In a way it made a lot of sense, the "MBA guys in Havard" or any of the so call fiancial gurus, had been using complicated financial instruments base on speculative concept of paper money. After all at that time when they implement their financial acuemen during the years lead up to 2008, it seem that they were doing miracles. A $1000 investment can be easily turn in to $1 000 000 investment. All of this is done without any viable leverage. In affect when the first sign of an economic meltdown was spotted their mutimillion investments quickly evaporated back to their $1000 start up cost. Another case of greed in a fragile speculative environment.



3. Incompetent but greedy industry leaders - When the leaders of some of the biggest car companies in the US came to the senate to plead for a financial bailout for their precious car industry, they did it brazenly with personal jets and large private cars. That was just a glimpse of the greed that affects their woeful decision that lead up to the crisis. The culture of greed is not only limited to them as other such leaders from across all sectors and around the world are also at fault for falling to the green eye monster. After when CEO's are paid with multimillion dollars salaries we would expect some kind of results from them and not going to governments to ask for a bailout when they still maintain their culture of excessive of spending. Why should we reward people for failure?

In conclusion the causes stated above are all cause to the same underlying problem of greed or more specifically the actions cause by greed. The greed for money can be very addictive and dangerous indeed.