Wilberne Persaud

Jamaica Meltdown: Indigenous Financial Sector Crash 1996 Wilberne Persaud

Unwarranted optimism guided Jamaica's indigenous financial sector institutions. They converted cash to speculative investments. Driven more by egos than economics they built grand Head Offices-dubbed the 'edifice complex' by one of Jamaica's most successful businessmen. Some of their activities skirted legal lines. The Courts adjudged others outright fraud. This general attitude and euphoric behaviours always precede crash. Jamaica Meltdown explores Jamaica's financial sector crisis of the 1990s and its aftermath. A fully emancipated, indigenous financial sector combined with and fuelling release of the people's creative energies could have produced true economic development. Instead it was pushed into a tailspin and crashed. Rather than progress, retarded development ensued. The Jamaican economy and people now faced the tremendous cost of rebuilding confidence-paying down non-productive debt precisely when education, technology, and health initiatives for the intensified global economy warranted highest priority. Jamaica Meltdown is an earnest look at the history of this financial crisis from a vantage point internal to the unfolding reality by an author with a strong grasp of finance theory.