Wall Street meltdown cripples weaklings
Al Jeratso
October 06, 2008 The financial volatility in the Wall Street has spread without control to the rest of the world, thus putting some corporate subsidiaries' in the international markets without any option but to suffer the tailspin of the Lehman Brothers' collapse.
One of the markets that is now reeling from the Wall Street dilemma is the Philippine investment and insurance sector like the Philippine-American Life Insurance Company, which is majority owned by American Insurance Group (AIG). It's good to hear that AIG was rescued by the federal government which pumped at least US$85 billion to keep it going.
Despite this, many stakeholders of PhilAm Life in the Philippines have trooped en masse to its headquarters in Malate, worried that their investments for their children's education and retirement would be trapped in a mess. And so as not to create more panic among the policyholders, PhilAm Life officials have assured them that there's nothing much to worry about considering that the company is capable of protecting their investments.
Well and good for many policyholders to hear these reassuring words from PhilAm Life officials themselves. Otherwise, it would be another useless huge investments in the offing should rumors of PhilAm collapse has taken place.
As always, it is the trouble when investments in a developing country's financial market is heavily dependent on its global headquarters like the US in case of meltdown. According to economists, the Wall Street meltdown was the worst that hit the US financial market in many decades. What is inevitable there is that global affialitates have suffered the unwanted shocks that reverberated throughtout the rest of the world like wayward tsunamis. And why not? With most of the world's financial markets dependent on the Wall Street for their performance, almost everybody else was caught off-guard by the onset of its ferocity.
Market analysts could only hope that the federal government should explore all means to mete penalties against those who may have pestered Wall Street for their own personal advantage. Right now, all we hear are noises of the federal government's initiative to fend off the impacts of this financial meltdown.
Tags: Meltdown
