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The author defies all the commonsense reasoning of the affluent western world. He totally trusted the poorest of the poor to keep their word and pay their bills on time and to the amazement of the entire world they did.
The story of the Grameen Bank is absolutely one of the best I have ever heard. Here is an actual solution to end poverty everywhere in the world that has worked already. I could not have been more excited after reading this book that we finally have the means to end poverty once and for all. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to actually get out there and do something.
A wonderfully written book about what has been going on in the third world countries by Yunus, and what can be done here in the U.S. You will find the results of the Banker for the Poor a really uplifting read, and wonder what one can do to spread this method to those who cannot reach loans any other way to be successful.
They help the government employees in the bureaucracies. Muhammad Yunus is the next best thing to Milton Friedman. Helping the poor means those bureaucrats are out of a job. He's a lot wordier than Uncle Milton, though.Muhammad Yunus is responsible for a revolutionary approach to poverty eradification: skip the world bank, bypass the UN, abolish the welfare state, and loan the money directly to poor people. Slowly, he describes people turning away from reliance on government. People know what they need to survive and thrive. Tiny bits of money so women can buy grain to grind for profit.
Often it is as little as $125 dollars for a tin roof for their shack, so they can continue weaving or grinding grain for sale during the 5-month rainy season. No collateral. That $125 may be the only thing keeping a family from desperate, filthy poverty. He hasn't found the words yet for what he believes.
I do not know what Hillary Clinton and Jimmy Carter's endorsements are doing on this book. Tiny bits of money that do not pass through the hands of bureaucrats or corrupt governments. Microcredit unleashes human potential.Beginning at page 185, Yunus explores the reality of the welfare state in developed countries: the disincentives for work; the imprisonment of the poor at the bottom; and the tenacity of welfare programs, blocking innovation. In real life, the taxes taken from rich people do not help the poor. But governments and banking traditions get in the way of poverty alleviation and perpetuate the misery.Grameen bank has partnered with poor people worldwide to help them pull themselves out of poverty through individual initiative. Yunus was raised and trained in a marxist/Communist mentality (pp 203-220), but you can tell he is trying to shrug it off. Unsecured. Page 204 is a rallying cry for government to get out of the way of individual enterprise.
It may bring about their dignified self-sufficiency. Tiny bits of money to the best tamale maker so he can buy a cart and sell his tamales through town. The private sector, unlike the government, is open to everyone.Loaded with examples of people who have succeeded with micro loans, this book is a winner. He still has a hard time admitting capitalism is a benefit to humanity, but he concedes that free markets are very natural and wholesome, and indeed, the only solution for wiping out poverty.To the extent that we continue to rely on governments for social programs, we will fail the poor.Exciting to read.
This seems to have been an ingenious idea. I believe him, but the man has been in business for more than 30 years now; it would be nice to have SOME indicator of effectiveness. Moreover, when he discusses the "star" system, whereby individual Grameen branches apply for recognition for outstanding performance, he notes almost in passing that only 21 of more than 1,100 branches have even applied for the "brown star," which is awarded if 100% of the borrowers have escaped poverty. $4 billion isn't even a drop in the bucket on that scale.And yes, Grameen borrowers have a superb record of repayment. Can the free market provide such things for the poor. Maybe none of them even received it.
It would just be nice to know exactly what he has done and how he has done it. He has expanded it to serve millions of people and give out billions of dollars in loans. First and most importantly, you can scour through Banker to the Poor and not find anything concrete about whether the Grameen Bank and all of its allied institutions have actually reduced poverty. We get a few nuggets: one key innovation appears to be giving loans to small groups of borrowers, who essentially monitor each other. Yunus seems to have done a great deal of good; smart, committed, effective people and organizations support him. His story is thrilling, even inspiring. Muhammed Yunus has worked tirelessly for the poorest of the poor. This tone is heightened by an overheated performance by Ray Porter in the unabridged audio edition.This surfeit of heat over light really comes through when Yunus argues that credit should be a "human right." But he simultaneously says that Grameen only wants highly motivated and energized borrowers, who will work and commit to making their businesses become successful.
So we still don't know anything about outcomes.This critique is necessary because Yunus makes some quite extravagant claims in the book, e.g. How would these entrepreneurial ventures look any different from the traditional nonprofit sector. But it is the ONLY one that Yunus offers in the entire book.Think about the scale of Grameen: it has delivered more than $4 billion in loans since it was founded. Yunus doesn't tell us.In fact, although Banker to the Poor gives a decent enough overall narrative of Grameen and its founder, it tells us precious little about the model, how it works, and why it is successful. But they also paid back the brutally unfair loans that they got from rapacious middlemen before Yunus stepped it for precisely the reason that Yunus explains: they have no other choice.
Now, 100% is a very tall order and it's not the best indicator. How in the world can you criticize someone like that.Well, here's how. How can the proper incentives be provided. But his account of why such talented people work for Grameen, how he is able to retain them, and whether such staff can be found in other places and at a sufficient scale, is not explained.My suspicion got piqued when I realized that no one seems to have been able to replicate his model on the scale he has in Bangladesh -- or at least none that he discusses. And he does discuss how dedicated his staff is, and -- to his great credit -- he names many of the important staffers and how they contributed to the organization. That sounds impressive until you realize that Bangladesh has more than 120 million people, about 40% of the size of the United States.
Of course not, Yunus says: that's why he needed to start Grameen in the first place. There are lots of people like that, and lots of people NOT like that. He has developed an enormously exciting new model for economic and social empowerment. He even relates the exact words of the exact conversations. He does talk about replications, but they seem to be small and not really making a dent.And I confess to a certain amount of annoyance as to the style of the book: the intrepid advocate Yunus battles intransigent bureaucrats, lazy bankers, arrogant development agencies (who, like the World Bank, nevertheless have funded him lavishly since the early 90's). What about those borrowers who are not as highly motivated and responsible.
It makes a good deal of sense and it's not as if anyone else has the magic bullet. What structures will ensure this. In the middle of the book, Yunus says that he wants outside independent auditors to look at the outcomes for Grameen borrowers. Yunus wants to end world poverty, and more power to him: but at the fundamental level, in this book he doesn't really seem to have thought through the most important implications of his argument.If you know next to nothing about micro-finance, as I did before reading this book, it's worth it. the government should get out of the business of social service, health care, and education provision altogether. He then proposes a rather hazy notion of "socially conscious entrepreneurs" that will fill the gap, and insists that this sector -- which really has yet to exist anywhere -- can do it.
Do they have the right to credit, too. I'm looking forward to reading his next book and finding out the substance, because Banker to the Poor certainly doesn't provide it.
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