Saturday, February 19, 2011

Felix Salmon raises some doubts about microfinance

in http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/02/17/how-microfinance-can-work/. Excepts:
"I’m not saying that bankers shouldn’t profit from serving the poor; I’m just saying that the banks should be local institutions which reinvest their profits in the community. If a microfinance institution is set up so that a substantial flow of money is going out of poor neighborhoods and into the pockets of millionaires, there’s something wrong, and I’m going to be very skeptical that the poor are actually being helped at all.....
My core argument is and has been that for-profit microlenders who don’t take deposits can be bad for the borrowers and also pose a significant systemic risk."

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