Grameen
Saturday, October 14th, 2006
Image © I’m trying to trace
A cloud of witnesses. To whom? To what?
To the small fire that never leaves the sky.
To the great fire that boils the daily pot.To all the things we are not remembered by,
Which we remember and bless. To all the things
That will not notice when we die,Yet lend the passing moment words and wings
….
To make is such. Let us make. And set the weather fair.
IN A celebratory mood. The Nobel has gone to Grameen. Microfinance and lending are powerful forces for change in developing nations, and Muhammad Yunus’ model has heart and managerial and intellectual soundness, using business principles in support of a social mission. This prize gives recognition to the great work he’s done and will generate publicity and feed more resources into this first-rate initiative.
Microcredit is the extension of small loans, typically US$50 to US$100, to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans. Grameen Bank has been instrumental in helping millions of poor Bangladeshis, many of them women, improve their standard of living by letting them borrow small sums to start businesses. Loans go toward buying items such as cows to start a dairy, chickens for an egg business, or mobile phones to start businesses where villagers who have no access to phones pay a small fee to make calls.
(Culled from the CNN article)
You can find out more about how it differs from conventional banking here, and here’s a video on the work they do.
More than one billion people are condemned to live on less than US$1 per day. Such a crisis demands tangible solutions, put into practice on a wide scale. It requires leadership from civil society and governments. Microfinance is one of the most powerful solutions to poverty in existence today, and Dr. Yunus is the leader most responsible for developing and implementing it in Bangladesh and globally.
- From the Grameen Foundation website
The bank and its clients deserve our respect. They’ve got heart and they’ve got brains. This system that helps break the cycle of poverty appeals to my bone-deep Rawlsian conviction that social equality is the way. As I said earlier, good economics and grassroots community work end war.
World War I was supposed to be the war to end wars. Then it was World War II. But war doesn’t end war. Global understanding ends war. Justice and equality and schools and hospitals end war. The peace corps, volunteers and all tracks of diplomacy end war. Good economics ends war.
Kudos also to the other nominees, who show the best spirit of makers. What we need are more people like them, with integrity and drive and vision and determination, a gift for detail and knowledge of their limitations, while being remarkably free from the afflictions of inferiority, persecution or messianic complexes.
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A site where you can donate to the Grameen Foundation. There’s no point if I just drone on and on about Rawls and Amartya Sen ad nauseum without making a real difference.
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Warren Buffett on estate tax and welfare —
“If you take away the estate tax, that money will have to come from somewhere else. If not from estate taxes then you inherently get it from poorer citizens. Less than 2% of estates will pay the estate tax. They would still have $50 million left over on average. I think those that get the lucky tickets should pay the most to the common causes of society. I believe in a big redistribution. Wealth is a bunch of claim checks that I can turn in for houses, etc. To pass those claim checks down to the next generation is the wrong approach. But for those that think I am perpetuating the welfare state, consider if you are born to a rich parent. You get a whole bunch of stocks right at the beginning of your life, and thus you are sort of on a welfare state of support from your rich parents from the beginning. What’s the difference?”
