Re: [Pen-l] microcredit in the global economy

["Sean Andrews" <cultstud76@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 4:34 PM, Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Barack Obama's job at the moment is to get elected and he may not be more
radical than that.

But I was struck by this passage in the biography of his mother on the Time
website, Ann Dunham.

I wonder how much he knows about it. If/when he gets drawn into a series of
meetings about restructuring the global economy, I wonder if people will try
to lobby him to get this sort of thing included on the agenda.
There will be lots of parts of the world that will need reconstruction, and
it will be better from the bottom up.

Or not...

http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Micro.html 

From Doug Henwood's Left Business Observer:

"Turning peasant women into mini-capitalists is just furthering the reach of finance capital and shifting the burden of risk to a class who already bear the brunt of poverty without safety nets. And playing cheerleader to dead-end consumerism and self-exploitation strengthens the arguments of the slash-and-burn policy crowd as they cut public programs and replace them with the rhetoric of credit-fueled self-empowerment.

Since some individuals have been helped by microloans, their individual cases form a powerful body of rhetoric that plays into the myth of America itself - work hard and make it. Now the microlenders promise the destitute they can "borrow our money and be your own boss." Sounds like a late-night TV pitch for instant wealth through no-money-down real estate - and just about as believable."

And from Patrick Bond on "the scamming of poor people through microfinance" 

http://www.nu.ac.za/ccs/files/Bond%20IJHS%20microcredit%20critique.pdf 

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