Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus has become the fall guy for microcredit’s abuses by major banks.
Microcredit on Trial: The Sacking of Muhammad Yunus
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Microcredit
Poverty Capitalism: Interview with Ananya Roy
The last decade of officially celebrated growth left behind a vast underclass. The world’s richest 500 people, hardly enough to fill a movie theater, command more wealth than the bottom 416 million. From the varied vantage points of affluence, the poor are many things — victims, citizens, objects, profit opportunities. Ananya Roy’s recent book Poverty Capital brilliantly captures a growing global consensus about poverty, and a brave new world of ideas aiming to fulfill oft repeated declarations of “making poverty history.”
Tahrir Square a Product, in Part, of the Perversion of Microcredit
Microcredit’s odd link to police brutality.
Interview with the Islamic Human Rights Commission
Massoud Shadjareh is the chair and Arzu Merali the director of research of the Islamic Human Rights Commission in London, which was established in 1997. They talked with FPIF in December about Islamophobia in the United Kingdom, the rise of the far right, and the Prevent Terrorism initiative of the British government
Criminally High Interest Rates Foul the Wellsprings of Microcredit in India
Skeptics of microlending argue that exorbitant interest rates reduce the practice to little more than formalized loan sharking.
Debate on Microcredit
Foreign Policy In Focus asked the Microcredit Summit Campaign’s Sam Daley-Harris to respond to the question of whether microcredit is the solution to global poverty or whether its benefits have been oversold. Robert Pollin, who also provided this FPIF analysis of microcredit’s plusses and minuses, responds to Daley-Harris below. Finally, Felicia Montgomery also of the Microcredit Summit Campaign responds to Pollin.
Microcredit: False Hopes and Real Possibilities
Making credit accessible to poor people is a laudable aim. But as a tool for fighting global poverty, microcredit should be judged by its effectiveness, not good intentions.
Poll: Fewer Guns, More Talk
Five years ago the Bush administration launched its war on terror without end. About 90% of Americans applauded. The administration has been ramping up the fear to win elections ever since. This strategy is no longer working. Soon the talk shows and editorial pages will be chewing over exit polling to opine about the impact of the war on the election. But it’s already clear that decisive majorities of Americans have had enough of a militarized, unilateral foreign policy.