[Reader-list] To add tuppence to the micro credit debate (Monica Narula)

[Franciska Lambrechts]

Well it's clear that micro-credit or fair trade movements and the like 
will not make an economy boom. That it doesn't work for everybody and 
in every context, there are no miracle solutions and if you had to come 
up with a miracle to get a nobel price they wouldn't have to give any. 
That it gives an impulse in a social context -empowering of the women, 
even if the word 'empower' is maybe a bit big- isn't a bad thing. Even 
if it's just for a part of the people involved that it means a real 
difference it is already an achievement. About the interest rates, if 
you don't count interest on the whole of the loans according to the 
inflation rate and the basically running of the bank there is no more 
bank in no time it's as simple as that. To say that it would be better 
to put them all in a sweat shop, good for you good for us, I have my 
doubts apart from the fact that seen how many clothes here on the 
marked have a label: made in Bangladesh there must be already a lot of 
them. To say that in China they got 120 million people out of poverty 
is one side, the other side is : for how many chinese things got worse? 
  They are consciously building up a middle class which is the classic 
motor of a capitalist economy combined with an almost monstrous 
industrialization. This doesn't mean that the group for whom 
micro-credit is intended will benefit, they most certainly will make 
out the low wages working force which enables the layer above to make 
profits. Of course that China is coming up as an economical force is a 
sort of relief in the sense that it balances power in a global context. 
I don't think it has to be or micro or macro. It's a different level 
with a different target. You might say that keeping people on a 
survival rate keeps them quiet and in that sense a sort of status quo, 
that the micro-credit as a system counts on a long term movement and 
that maybe a capitalist world won't wait for them, maybe but that's 
difficult to predict. That the world bank is a very dubious 
institution, I agree. And what seems to bother Mr Hashmi at least 
partially is that it's a Bangladeshi and not an Indian who got a nobel 
price.