The Charlie Rose Show recently interviews Muhammad Yunus along side Michael Milken aboutthe credit crisis. Michael Milken was a notorious junk bond trader in the 1980's...
from Business Week Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim and Bangladeshi Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus are joining forces to offer credit to poor people in Mexico.Slim and Yunus are creating Grameen-Carso, a lending institution that in its first phase will provide at least 80,000 loans.Slim is committing at least US$45 million to the venture, which they expect to expand to other parts of Latin America.Slim said Monday the institution will follow the model developed by Yunus' Grameen Bank. Link to full article. May expire in future....
Small Loans, Big Dreams
How Muhammad Yunus, Grameen, & Microfinance are Changing the World
Please join us Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 at the Intuit HQ in Mountain View for the next SVMN meeting where our speaker will be Alex Counts, President and CEO of Grameen Foundation:
Alex Counts, Grameen Foundation
Alex will discuss his new book Small Loans, Big Dreams which tells the story of microfinance through the eyes of borrowers, lenders, and leaders of microfinance. Alex will share his perspectives from the book as well as personal experiences from the early years of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, where he spent years working side by side with Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner & founder of Grameen. [note: you may purchase the book in advance from the Grameen Foundation...
from the Financial Times Muhammad Yunus warns of a crisis as big as the subprime credit crunch. He says that overseas investors should stop flooding money into microfinance. - kaleBy Tom Burgis in Johannesburg“If you build it up that there’s a lot of money to make you can get a subprime kind of thing, but this time it’s the really poor people who will be in trouble,” Mr Yunus said in answer to a question from the Financial Times while speaking to reporters from a microfinance summit in Indonesia.The gathering of microfinanciers announced a voluntary transparency drive under which willing institutions will submit details of the interest rates they charge on their loans. Mr Yunus’s Grameen Bank is the biggest of several lenders serving a total of 20m clients to commit to the...
from the Vancouver Sun Don Cayo is a columnist in Vancouver who writes on poverty related issues. Here is a excerpt on the interest charges on micro credit loans. This is related to the story about Muhammad Yunus saying there is no place for profits in microcredit - Kaleby Don CayoAnnual interest of 25, 50 or maybe 100-plus per cent: What's fair? Where, exactly, should the line be drawn between loan-sharks and worthy micro-credit programs? Between enterprises that exploit poor people who can't get conventional loans and those that help them?There's no short answer.Rates that sound to Westerners like gouging -- 25, 35 or even 45 per cent a year -- may, in fact, be the least a responsible lender can charge and stay afloat. Factor in the inflation that plagues many developing economies,...
from the International Herald Tribune A debate has begun in microcredit circles about how much should the lender profit. Muhammad Yunus gives his side in this story. - KaleWhen Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus began making US$27 loans to women in Bangladesh three decades ago, he wasn't thinking of initial public offerings and return on equity.Now that the field of microfinance is become increasingly commercialized, though, such terms weigh heavily on his mind."Poor people should not be considered an opportunity to make yourself rich," Yunus said by phone from Bali, Indonesia, where he is attending a meeting on microcredit that opened Monday.This week at the Microcredit Summit Campaign conference, privatization advocates will be pitted against those who believe you can save the...
from Banking Wire This explores the new concept thatMuhammad Ynuns has for giving cell phones to the poor. - Kaleby Karen Krebsbach,Cellphone banking is emerging as an important link that could bring the most basic financial services to the globes billions of unbanked cellphone users. Bringing the unbanked into the formal economy is a key initiative of various playerspayments processors, financial-services firms, telecommunications firmsbut it, like the developing countries most affected, is a work in progress.The obligation for financial institutions is to serve as the foundation on which such socio-economic progress can rest.In battling poverty in the developing world with affordable financial services, there is nothing quite as democratizing as the ubiquitous cellphone. Few proponents...
This is part of a Voice of America series on entrepreneurs throught the world. This part of the series profiles how micro credit helps. - Kale By Barry WoodThe Grameen Bank in Bangladesh is a ground breaker. It lends almost exclusively to women. And its small business loans are almost always paid back. Nobel Prize-winning StandardMuhammad Yunus is the bank's founder and a hero in his country. Grameen was the first to lend on a grand scale to poor, aspiring entrepreneurs in the developing world. The venture into microcredit won Yunus and his bank the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. "It's fantastic news. We are all very excited about the good news. It excites everybody in Bangladesh and also the people who are involved in micro-credit around the world," Yunus said.Melissa Carrier, at the...
from the Daily Star, Bangladesh CA hopes Nobel Committee to raise the issue in world forumsUnb, DhakaChief Adviser (CA) Fakhruddin Ahmed yesterday said poverty alleviation is a must for lasting peace and sustainable development, but climate change is a major factor in Bangladesh that casts adverse impacts on poverty.The head of the caretaker government made the remark when visiting Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee Ole Danbolt Mjos made a courtesy call on him at his office in the afternoon.The CA said developing countries, particularly Bangladesh, are least responsible for climate change but worst sufferers from adversities stemming from climate change. He mentioned the back- to-back floods and cyclone 'Sidr' that wrought havoc on the country last year.He cited a prediction...
from the Jamaica GleanerFounder of Grameen Bank and Nobel laureate, Prof Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh, was in Jamaica as a guest of Scotia Group Jamaica to deliver the fifth Annual Scotiabank Lecture. Chairman and managing director of the The Gleaner Company, Oliver Clarke, interviewed the 2006 Nobel peace prize winner on Wednesday.Q: What do you define as micro lending, and how extensive is it now?Micro lending is lending money to the poor, particularly women, without collateral, guarantee, lawyers; trust-based lending for income generating activity, at reasonable interest rates.Since you started, is the concept now extensively practised throughout the world?Yes, it started 27 years ago in a small village and we lent a total of $27 to two people, and it worked. Gradually, we extended it...
from the Daily StarBrazilian President Lula da Silva has sought assistance from Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus to develop microcredit programme for the poor in Brazil, particularly for the poorest regions of the country.He also focused on the poverty alleviation programmes of the Brazilian government when Prof Yunus met him at Alvorada Palace in Brasilia on Thursday, says a press release.During the meeting, Prof Yunus briefed the president on the Grameen Bank programmes.Prof Yunus, who visited Brazil from June 11 to 14 at the invitation of the Brazilian Senate, also addressed the plenary session of the Senate where he spoke of the activities of the Grameen Bank.The speech was telecast live throughout the country on the Senate TV Channel.Following the address at the Senate, Prof Yunus...
from the Toronto Star Haroon Siddiqui Call him the Gandhi of our times.The Mahatma ended colonialism using non-violence. Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus is lifting millions out of poverty with microcredit (lending small amounts to the neediest). Now he's onto another revolutionary idea, "social entrepreneurship" (you invest not to make a profit but to do good, while still recouping your principal).Yunus, like Gandhi, is humble in manner as well as dress: a simple long cotton kurta, shirt and vest. And wise, witty and patient.When colleagues at his Garmeen (Village) Bank in Bangladesh grumbled that only 12,000 of the 100,000 beggars it lent money to had given up panhandling, Yunus responded: "Give them time; they are restructuring their business. They know which houses are good for...
from the Toronto Star Need can happen here, Nobel Prize-winning microcredit messiah tells business peopleJun 10, 2008 04:30 AMRita TrichurBusiness ReporterMuhammad Yunus doesn't talk like a typical banker. He believes that access to credit is a fundamental human right.Nicknamed Bangladesh's "banker to the poor" for motivating a global microfinance movement, the Nobel Prize-winning economist told a Toronto business audience yesterday the financial system shuts out nearly two-thirds of the world's population, denying the poor both opportunity and dignity.Poverty is often perceived as a dilemma of the developing world, Yunus said, but the problem is alive and well in North America."You'll be surprised how many people in Toronto do not qualify to do business with the banks," he said in a...
from MITNobel laureate Yunus tells MIT class of '08 they can 'change the world'David Chandler, MIT News OfficeJune 6, 20082006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohammad Yunus told graduating students at MIT's 142nd Commencement exercises on Friday that they "represent the future of the world," and urged them to spend at least part of their time in coming years creating a whole new kind of businesses to help make the world a better place.Nature cooperated with MIT's Commencement, but only after threatening to put a serious damper on the ceremony: The opening processional was delayed a few minutes by rain that had been pouring down through the early morning, but the skies cleared just in time for the ceremonies to proceed and for 2,335 graduates to receive their degrees.Citing his own in...
from E Commerce TimesBy Andrew K. BurgerCombining the technological prowess of a company such as Intel with the microfinance know-how of Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, a joint venture between Intel and Yunus' Grameen Trust will begin making loans and sharing expertise with people in poor countries to help bridge the digital divide.Intel Latest News about Intel and Grameen Trust are joining forces in an effort to bridge the financial and digital divides separating many of the world's most wanting from basic services and economic opportunities.Joined via video link by Grameen Trust founder and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, Intel Chairman Craig Barrett announced that Intel Capital and Grameen Trust are forming a joint venture that aims to bring information and communications...
from Middle East onlineWe started the Millennium with the war on terror, and all our resources, all our attention, all our discussions are concentrating on terrorism. Billions of dollars went into a war, which we have not achieved anything, notes Muhammad Yunus. [The following is a transcript of an interview with Muhammad Yunus by Amy Goodman from Democracy Now!]AMY GOODMAN: “Banker to the poor,” Muhammad Yunus is the Bangladeshi economist who was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. Yunus shared the Nobel with the Grameen Bank, which he founded three decades ago. The microcredit program he pioneered has helped hundreds of thousands of impoverished Bangladeshis, mainly women, by providing small unsecured loans, which are then repaid. Yunus accepted the Nobel award in Oslo a little...
from CNNNEW YORK (CNN) -- A bank operating on a concept that has lifted thousands of people out of grinding poverty in the developing world has set its sights on helping the poverty-stricken in America. The Grameen Bank rose from humble origins in the impoverished South Asian country of Bangladesh to win the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. It offers small loans to let poor people start their own businesses, a concept known as microlending.With the threat of a looming recession, the subprime mortgage meltdown and tougher standards by lenders, poor Americans deemed unworthy of credit by commercial banks now have somewhere to turn.The bank's concept is simple. Credit is a basic human right, says founder Muhammad Yunus. Offer even a small credit and a person will work out how to best use it to break...
from AFP via GoogleWASHINGTON (AFP) — The World Bank and British-based bank Standard Chartered said Thursday that they had teamed up to expand the microfinance, or tiny loans, to impoverished borrowers in Africa and Asia.Standard Chartered, a commercial bank, is already dabbling in microfinance, but the new initiative with the Washington-based World Bank will enable it to boost its existing programs."This transaction will unlock more funding for microfinance. We believe improving access to finance is a key lever in reducing poverty and catalyzing broader social and economic development," said Standard Chartered chief executive Peter Sands.Few people had heard of microcredit before a determined Bangladeshi economist called Muhammad Yunus won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, and put the...
from Gulf NewsBy Saifur Rahman, Business EditorDubai: Nobel peace prize winner, Professor Mohammad Younus has told companies not to waste money sponsoring football or cricket matches but to invest in social businesses which will empower people and help eradicate poverty globally.Speaking at the International Islamic finance forum in Dubai, Dr Younus said: “A lot of companies throw their money in sponsoring matches or PR gimmicks as part of Corporate Social Responsibility.“However by investing in social businesses they could change the lives of millions of people across the globe.”His company Grameen Bank has partnered with Danish and French companies in providing nutrition products and pure drinking water to the poor people in Bangladesh, a move Mr Younus said could be replicated...
from Government TechnologyThe Tech Museum Awards, a signature program of The Tech Museum of Innovation (The Tech), recently announced that Professor Muhammad Yunus, pioneer of microcredit and founder of Grameen Bank, is the recipient of the 2008 James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award, sponsored by Applied Materials. Yunus will accept this distinguished honor during the annual Tech Museum Awards Gala on November 12, where he and 25 innovators from around the world will be celebrated for applying technology to solve the most urgent issues facing humanity."For more than three decades, Muhammad Yunus' broad vision, creativity and leadership have improved the lives of millions through innovative, micro-financing practices," said Mike Splinter, president and chief executive officer of...
from Russia TodayFor three decades, Bangladeshi economist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus has been using micro-loans as a weapon to fight poverty. With loans as small as $US 10, he helped millions to launch small businesses. Now he is in Moscow to share his ideas on using micro-credit.At his Moscow presentation on Thursday, Yunus said the need for micro-financing in Russia is huge.Mikhail Mamuta, the head of Russia’s micro-financing centre, agrees. He says Russia needs no less than $US 10 million for micro-credit.Most banks won’t loan money unless the borrower has both a credit history and a guarantor. The Bangladeshi economist believes the financial sector should not view micro-credits for small businesses as charity work.“Anyone can be brought within the framework of...
from South Asian MediaPARIS: Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus on Monday unveiled a deal between his pioneering Grameen bank and French group Veolia Environment to provide clean water to poor rural communities in Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi economist also sought support from President Nicolas Sarkozy for creating more microcredit schemes to fight poverty, particularly in Africa."I wanted to make him understand how effective a tool microcredit is in helping the poor people, particularly the poor women, to take control of their own lives and pull themselves out of the problems and benefit the children," Yunus told reporters after his meeting at the Elysee palace.After meeting with Sarkozy, Yunus sat down with top business leaders at the Elysee including billionaire Vincent Bollore and announced...
from EkklesiaBy Patrick HynesThe much publicised “credit crunch” refers to the way loans and other forms of credit are becoming difficult or more expensive to obtain. This crisis may bring harder times for us all, individuals and businesses alike. But access to credit has always been a daily problem for people who are poor, as they are often denied fair finance due to a lack of collateral. The notion of collateral, where property is used to secure a loan, ensures the poor will always be poor.With no collateral there is no chance of a loan, the means to self-employment and therefore to own something as basic as a shelter. Someone needs simply to break through this vicious cycle of poverty, and thus enable people to earn a dignified living for themselves and their families.Early...
from the Korea Times By Ali Hamid KhanProfessor Yunus and his Grameen Bank, of which he is the founder and managing director, have given a tremendous boost to the image of Bangladesh and also given the world a new vision, a new concept to tackle the most formidable and destructive problem nagging Bangladesh and most parts of the world; deep-rooted and pervasive poverty gnawing away at the world's economic and social stability and harmony.The project started in Jobra (a village adjacent to Chittagong University) and neighboring villages from 1976 to 1979. With the central bank's sponsorship and support of the nationalized commercial banks, Tangail district (a district north of Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh) was brought under this project in 1979.The bank's positive impact on its...
from the Calcutta TelegraphWashington, Microcredit pioneer Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, which has dared to finance the poor in the shadow of Manhattan’s skyscrapers, is finding that it has to beg or borrow in order to expand its work in the US.The Third World bank has dented Wall Street’s self-esteem by lending $145,000 to immigrants in New York’s largely Indian retail business district of Jackson Heights since the beginning of this year.But it is finding that a complete absence of microcredit laws in the US is coming in the way of giving more loans to those in America who have no access to regular commercial banks. Their number is estimated at close to 30 million. Another 45 million people in this country have only partial access to commercial banking, according to academic...
from The GlobalistBy Muhammad Yunus Every country and every region has its own definition of poverty, caused by variations in cultural habits and living conditions. As Nobel Prize winner and Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus explains, what is most important is a definition of poverty that is of practical use for aid workers on the ground.At Grameen Bank, we had to develop our own definition of poverty so that we would be able to measure our success in helping people rise out of poverty through microcredit. We could have used a benchmark based on money income — for example, the equivalent of one U.S. dollar or two a day. These are both commonly used markers of poverty in the international development community.However, we felt that this system would not be practical for day-to-day...
from Business WeekBy Steve HammThe Good: An inspiring volume full of practical information on alleviating povertyThe Bad: : Some may be skeptical of his ideas, especially a "social stock market."The Bottom Line: Gives hope that, finally, the planet’s poor can really be helped. Creating a World Without Poverty:Social Business and the Future of CapitalismBy Muhammad YunusPublicAffairs; 261 pp; $26Muhammad Yunus is a humble man who would resist being compared to Mahatma Gandhi. But the two have much in common as campaigners for social progress. While Gandhi's goal was the end of colonialism, Yunus' is just as grand: He means to reform capitalism to make it a tool for ending poverty. Think of him as Gandhi with a BlackBerry (RIMM).Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his work as...
from Indian MuslimsJeddah –(IINA)February 26 – Nobel Laureate Prof. Muhammad Yunus plans to introduce his Grameen Bank's micro credit concept in Saudi Arabia so as to stimulate business growth at the grassroots. The professor, who is on a visit as speaker of the Ninth Jeddah Economic Forum under way here, made the announcement at a reception hosted by the Consulate General of Bangladesh at Al-Salam Holiday Inn on Sunday evening. Prof. Yunus said that Abdul Latif Jameel Company has already applied the micro credit scheme and more companies would be engaged under his plan. Micro credit is the extension of very small loans to the unemployed, to poor entrepreneurs and to others living in poverty that is not considered bankable. These individuals lack collateral, steady employment and a...
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from the Denver Post...