| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"maff" |
| Date: |
03 Nov 2005 10:20:16 PM |
| Object: |
OT: The hidden wealth of the poor |
The hidden wealth of the poor
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5079324
Nov 3rd 2005
From The Economist print edition
Financial services are at last spreading from the rich to the
developing world-and even making money, writes Tom Easton
(interviewed here)
IN RICH countries, financial services on the whole work remarkably
well, despite the exotic salaries, the crackpot deals and the
occasional bust. The vast majority of people have access to
interest-bearing savings accounts, mortgages at reasonable rates,
abundant consumer credit, insurance at premiums that reflect the risk
of losses, cheap ways of transferring money, and innumerable sources of
capital for funding a business.
By contrast, financial services for poor people in developing
countries-a business known as "microfinance"-have mostly been
awful or absent. With no safe place to store whatever money they have,
the poor bury it, or buy livestock that may die, or invest in jewellery
that may be stolen and can be hard to sell. Basic life and property
insurance is rarely available. Home loans are costly, if indeed they
can be found at all. For many people, the only source of credit is a
pawnshop or a moneylender who may charge staggeringly high interest and
beat up clients who fail to pay on time. In the Philippines, lenders
who zip from town to town on motorcycles expect six pesos back for
every five they lend. That translates into an annual interest rate of
over 1,000% on a loan for a month.
Microloan
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/ed8026df47a05a46
Tom Easton
http://news.google.com/news?num=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=%22Tom%20Easton%22&btnG=Search&sa=N&tab=gn
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&q=%22Tom+Easton%22&tab=nw&ie=UTF-8&sa=N
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Tom+Easton%22&btnG=Search+Directory&hl=en&cat=gwd%2FTop
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22Tom+Easton%22&start=0&scoring=d&num=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&
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