Muhammad Yunus is the 2006 Nobel Prize Winner

[deception]

but his he a prophet for the poor or a huckster for the rich?

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061030/bello

i'm not going to slam yunas cause frankly i believe his intentions are completely honourable and that cant be said for most of us. although, the flaw with microcredit is the spurious assumption it shares with tax cuts- both assume consumption will be delayed in favour of investment; rarely does this occur for obvious reasons, e,g. we're hungry, the mortgage, etc.

 

[durvasa]

<div class="quote_poster">deception Wrote</div><div class="quote_post">
i'm not going to slam yunas cause frankly i believe his intentions are completely honourable and that cant be said for most of us. although, the flaw with microcredit is the spurious assumption it shares with tax cuts- both assume consumption will be delayed in favour of investment; rarely does this occur for obvious reasons, e,g. we're hungry, the mortgage, etc.</div>

It depends on what the goals are. As the article says, it appears to work ok as a
"safety net" for the moderately poor. Are most of the banking institutions giving out these loans at least able to turn a profit?

 

[deception]

<div class="quote_poster">durvasa Wrote</div><div class="quote_post"> Are most of the banking institutions giving out these loans at least able to turn a profit?</div>

i don't know much about it, other then i had a couple of friends who spoke highly of it after working for development projects which provided such a service. as to your question-no, i believe most of the these banks operate under the premise that they aren't going to get the loaned money back, for the most part its charity.

 

[Chuck]

Horrible decision to give him the award.

 

[umair]

<div class="quote_poster">Chuck Wrote</div><div class="quote_post">Horrible decision to give him the award.</div>

Why??

 

[deception]

yunas is deserving for the simple fact that his innovation in banking has swept the world.

 

[Shapecity]

It's almost like trickle down economics in reverse. I don't really follow individuals who are in the running for the Nobel Prize, but this doesn't seem like a breakthrough for the people involved.

I'm sure politicians love it because it's a tool they can use to inflate economic growth figures.

Remember when Bush was first elected he gave us back tax refunds? The idea was for people to take that money and have more spending power. This inflated the US markets GDP figures eventhough there wasn't really any real economic growth.

 

[Chuck]

The countries implementing this technique are still among the poorest in the world. It doesn't work.