The literature is replete with what constitute a crisis or financial meltdown, but as related to the issues in discourse Eichengreen and Portes (1987) have defined crisis “as a sharp change in asset prices that leads to distress among financial markets participants.” As Eichengreen (2004) noted, it is not very “clear where to draw the line between sharp and moderate price changes or how to distinguish severe financial distress from financial pressure.” Commentaries on the origin of the crisis noted myriad causes including excessive and corrupt practices of “sub prime mortgage lending” (that led to high mortgage default and delinquency rates in the United States), massive funding of the “war on terrorism” and the erroneous belief that “free market” principle is perfect, fair and efficient (The New York Times, November 20, 2008).
It is to be noted that because it was global, its consequences affected national, regional and global markets and economies.