[A-List] Army Takeover in Bangladesh + the Dark Side of the Microcredit Man

["Michael Keaney" <michael011@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

The WSJ wrote (when?)

Since January, an estimated 200,000 people, including hundreds of
leading politicians and businessmen, have been jailed under emergency
rules that suspend civil rights and outlaw all political activity.
According to human-rights groups, scores of others, seized by the troops
in the middle of the night, have been tortured to death or summarily
executed.

*****

http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/2007-March/065624.html

Also:

Micro loans are a sham. To begin with, microloan is not consumer
fiannce. It is a private loan to bypass the need og the poor for basic
capital with which to make a meager living. The public segment of the
national wealth, that is that segment that has not yet been assigned to
the private sector, belongs to all the people. Each person within a
state, regardless of economic system, being it capitalist or communist,
has a birth right to claim a share of the public wealth. He and her
should be able to use that share as collateral to get low interest loans
on par with the credit rating of sovereign debt. For example, if the
public wealth of the US is $30 trillion (out of a total national wealth
of $100 trillion), and there are 300 million US citizens, each citizen
has an equity claim of $100,000n on the national wealth which should
translate into $60,000 of credit line. A family of four would get a
credit line of $240,000.

For a country like Pakistan, each citizen should still have an equity of
US$10,000, which translates into a credit line of $6,000. There is no
need for any micro loan. If the borrower shoudl default, his or her
share of the national wealth will be forfeited. The problem is that the
national wealth is unevenly distributed so that the vast majority of the
population are derprived of their natural economic rights and are labled
as "poor". And they call this system a democracy.

Henry C.K. Liu

http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/2006-October/062961.html


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