I was amazed that when Muhammad Yunus, head of the state-supported, quasi-socialist, regimentation-promoting Grameen Bank, received his Nobel Prize that free-market commentators bought into the propaganda. They threw their hats in the air, and their brains too. It reminded me of how conservatives all lauded Jack Kemp’s program for “home ownership” without thinking critically of the means of ownership. For that matter, too many have been fooled by the Bush administration’s early rhetoric about creating an “ownership society” via government activism.
In any case, I’m pleased to see that microcredit has at least one critic at Cato: Thomas Dichter. His paper doesn’t include many details about current microcredit but it does talk about the fallacy of equated individual and social prosperity with the expansion of debt. Excellent.
By the way, ever since my stuff on Yunus has appeared, I’ve been receiving strangely ominous notes and packages from people who have variously worked at Grameen through the years, and they promise to give me the inside dope on the bank, and all the gritty and awful details, provided that we meet in some prearranged place or that I do not quote them by name and that they don’t have to put their name to their criticism. There must be some scandal lurking out there that someone could dig up if he looked hard enough.
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Wow, and you’re passing up an opportunity like this? It looks like you have the chance to throw eggs at the collective face of the Nobel committee. It would be cool to meet with one of these people too: “Excuse the gloom, but none may know of our meeting.”
On the flipside, imagine showing up to the meeting place to find a dead hooker and an 8-ball of crack along with a “I love bin Laden” T-shirt.
I have a hunch that the ending would not be so great (sad part is that the T-shirt would cause the most problems for you)
On the blogs, I noticed a spike in people from India submitting articles about their recent “education” in Fractional Reserve banking. You see, Indians have a strong tradition of hoarding gold and using it as a defacto savings. That tradition is making it very difficult for the central bankers to get people suckered into the fiat game. They tried microloans, and now they’re trying free “education” programs about how “modern” financial systems work. IMHO, they are sickening beasts who desire nothing more than to steal and leech from millions of poor people who are just starting to get a tiny tase of the benefits of free markets and free trade.
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