Brianddrpm's Favorite Links on microfinance from Diigo

Microfinance’s Success Sets Off a Debate in Mexico - New York Times

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 02:58:38 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

But Compartamos’s decision to go public last April became a flashpoint in what had been a genteel debate over how microfinance could tap into the financial markets’ vast resources. The initial public offering gets special mention at every microfinance conference, and has been condemned by Mr. Yunus, the Nobel laureate.

They are the center of a fractious debate: how far should microfinance go toward becoming big business?

At one end stand traditional microlenders, like the economist Muhammad Yunus, founder of the most famous microlender, the Grameen Bank, and winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. At the other are the Two Carloses, as they are widely known in this tight-knit world that gave them their start as starry-eyed idealists.

Tags: microfinance entrepreneurship microcredit

Posted by: brianddrpm

Marginal Revolution: My micro-credit essay with Karol Boudreaux

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 02:21:54 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

For better or worse, microborrowing often entails a kind of bait and switch. The borrower claims that the money is for a business, but uses it for other purposes. In effect, the cash allows a poor entrepreneur to maintain her business without having to sacrifice the life or education of her child. In that sense, the money is for the business, but most of all it is for the child. Such lifesaving uses for the funds are obviously desirable, but it is also a sad reality that many microcredit loans help borrowers to survive or tread water more than they help them get ahead. This sounds unglamorous and even disappointing, but the alternative—such as no doctor’s visit for a child or no school for a year—is much worse.

Tags: microcredit boudreaux cowen entrepreneurship microfinance

Posted by: brianddrpm

Windfalls of War - The Center for Public Integrity

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 02:20:11 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Louis Berger was one of the six companies chosen by USAID to bid on the main Iraqi reconstruction contract, but lost out to Bechtel. The four other companies that bid were Fluor, Halliburton's Kellogg, Brown & Root, Parsons, and Washington Group International.

Tags: microcredit microfinance entrepreneurship iraq

Posted by: brianddrpm

The Failed Promises of International Aid | Corrente

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 02:19:49 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

“The report estimated that 40% of the aid money spent in Afghanistan has found its way back to rich donor countries such as the US through corporate profits, consultants’ salaries and other costs, significantly inflating the cost of projects. For example, a road between the centre of Kabul and the international airport cost over $2.3m per kilometre in US aid money, at least four times the average cost of building a road in Afghanistan, today’s report says.”

And the companies the contracts went to bear familiar names: KBR, the Louis Berger group, Chemonics International, Bearing Point, and Dyncorp International.

Tags: corrente BergerGroup microfinance microcredit

Posted by: brianddrpm

The Entrepreneurial Mind: Cynicism about Free Enterprise

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 19:58:57 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

t takes time to build wealth. And real wealth comes from free enterprise. Are microloans the answer to transform an economy? Of course not. But they are a critical step in building long term transformations. Microloan programs are not just jobs programs, or worse yet, mechanisms for the redistribution of wealth from one country to another. Instead, they are creating a cultural seedbed for economic freedom and independence.

The "richness" of a country is not just measured in GDP. Microloans are making societies richer by creating hope, independence, and pride among thousands of "micro" entrepreneurs. And over the long run this will surely create monetary wealth in the countries that benefit from these efforts.

Tags: microfinance microcredit entrepreneurship

Posted by: brianddrpm