Category: Microenterprise
-
Conflicts of interest (Microfinance)
Financial Times: Conflicts of interest (If you have trouble accessing the article try clicking through at the post at the Marginal Revolution.) Bob Annibale's corner office, high up in one of London's few real skyscrapers, overlooks the Thames and the Millennium Dome from one window, Greenwich Park and the Royal Observatory from another. It is…
-
Giving Globally: Poverty
Newsweek: Poverty: Cheap Loans at Insanely High Rates? Give Us More What the world needs right now is more subprime lending—a lot more of it. Yes, I know that in the public imagination, subprime lending is the scourge responsible for crippling the U.S. financial system. The massive extension of credit to people who lacked extensive…
-
Mobile Banking for the Poor
Conde Nast Portfolio.com: Mobile Banking for the Poor At a press conference this morning in Mumbai, mobile-banking company Obopay announced an alliance with Grameen Solutions — an alliance with an extraordinarily ambitious goal. In ten years' time, the companies said, they would like to see 1 billion of the world's poor — people living on…
-
Businesses focused on the world’s poorest
Defeating Global Poverty (Dave Richards): Businesses focused on the world's poorest I am increasingly convinced that businesses focused on serving the world's poorest 4 billion citizens are a very good investment whether you are looking for financial return and/or positive social impact return. That is, for those of us who seek to end poverty, the…
-
California Dreams
Christianity Today: California Dreams How one West Coast ministry reaps kingdom profits by planting businesses. …Main Place Christian Fellowship, which operates the thrift store in Tustin, California, and the rehabilitation center in nearby Santa Ana, traffics in the hope that encourages Will to try to change his life. As a plant of Saddleback Church 20…
-
What Microloans Miss
New Yorker: What Microloans Miss Excellent article on both the benefits and limitations of microloans. … Microloans make poor borrowers better off. But, on their own, they often don’t do much to make poor countries richer. This isn’t because microloans don’t work; it’s because of how they work. The idealized view of microfinance is that…
-
Profit And Poverty: Why It Matters
Forbes: Profit And Poverty: Why It Matters Through the ages, we have come to associate profit with greed and serving the poor with self-sacrifice. Accordingly, now that the outstanding performance of leading microfinance banks has inserted banking at the base of the pyramid as an integral part of emerging-markets finance, socially conscious investors are starting…