Accountability and the Experience of the 2007 Global Financial Crisis

The ripples of the 2007 financial crisis are still felt in many economies. Taking advantage of hindsight, this paper examines the factors that facilitated the occurrence of the crisis and how the crisis was managed. It uses the concept of accountability in the private and public sectors of the economy as the yardstick for assessing the behaviour of errant financial actors and concludes that the crisis resulted from the cumulative lapses in corporate governance and operational procedures. It also concludes that profitability and accountability are not always positively related in a free enterprise system. An examination of the coping strategies used by the developed countries points to the effectiveness of planned government intervention in economic activities. For the developing countries, especially in Africa, the lesson is that a responsible government must at all times put the wellbeing of its citizens above any received doctrine.