The Historical Context of the UAEs Imperative for Transparency and Governance - Dissertation Example

According to the research findings the recent financial crisis that began with the subprime mortgage market in the United States has done more than correct an asset price bubble (which is typical of inefficiencies in market-based systems). It has drawn attention to factors that had exacerbated the adverse effects of such inefficiencies, in particular the poor banking regulatory regimes, and the lack of transparency and lamentable state of corporate governance in many regions across the globe.

The adverse effects of the crisis were not confined to the borders of the United States, but quickly spread by means of the contagion effect throughout the interlinked financial centres of the world. Even economies that did not have an active derivatives market were affected due to the weakness in the US dollar – the principal international currency for global trade and against which several currencies are pegged. To stabilize the extremely volatile financial markets, massive bailout packages and debt restructuring efforts were urgently put together as quickly as possible.

This stop-gap measure proved effective, but only in the short term. To ensure continued and full recovery, longer-term structural reform became the imperative, most important of which was the promotion of transparency. It was primarily because of concealment and fraud that many questionable financial transactions had evaded early detection, and accumulated to the point of that they could no longer be defused or contained by regulation. Mindful of the fact that the world’s national economies are inextricably linked and therefore the weakness of one is the weakness of all, global financial and economic alliances and unions called for greater transparency and regulatory compliance from all regional unions.

The Middle East and North African (MENA) region is among the region's most cited for lack of transparency, with Somalia and Iraq identified as two of the worst-ranked countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index. While the UAE is far removed from either of these two, it nevertheless is bound by many commonalities including regional economic, political, and trade agreements. Furthermore, the UAE has been one of the nations which had attracted public attention precisely on this issue.

Dubai, more than the