Move Over, Grameen: American Microcredit
Thanks to his post on the comment thread below, I just stumbled onto Presto's New Economy Ramblings:
There's a great post on a new trend among credit unions: entering the payday lending market. Credit unions are issuing payday loans for a service fee of a couple bucks, as opposed to $20 (an annual interest rate of up to 480%).
Now imagine what might happen if the banking industry were opened up to real competition: if licensing and capitalization requirments, and all other market entry barriers against mutual banking, were eliminated.
A blog about creating a more just economy. Topics will include cooperatives, local currencies, family businesses, and political decentralization. My inspirations include David Korten, Duane Elgin, E. F. Schumacher, and Thomas Greco.
There's a great post on a new trend among credit unions: entering the payday lending market. Credit unions are issuing payday loans for a service fee of a couple bucks, as opposed to $20 (an annual interest rate of up to 480%).
Now imagine what might happen if the banking industry were opened up to real competition: if licensing and capitalization requirments, and all other market entry barriers against mutual banking, were eliminated.
posted by Kevin Carson | 12:24 PM
5 Comments:
Thanks for your kind comments regarding my blog.
There is an organization in Seattle that gives microcredit loans to start small businesses called Washington CASH. Here's a brief description of them from their site:
"Washington Community Alliance for Self-Help (CASH) is an award-winning nonprofit organization that helps women with low-incomes, people with disabilities, and other financially-challenged individuals start up and run successful small businesses. We provide business training for self-employment, microcredit lending services, business coaching, technical assistance, and peer support. We believe in discipline, dignity, responsibility, courage, accountability, unity and hard work."
I don't know much about them yet, but I plan to do a little research and interviewing of some of the individuals involved sometime in the fall. Watch for it on my blog.
I'm currently finishing work on a web site for an organization I'm doing some volunteer work for, and will be writing much more on my blog in the very near future.
Thanks for the link to Mutual Banking. I look forward to reading it. You might want to check out Zopa, a UK web site that matches people with money to lend with borrowers, sort of a microcredit/microlending exchange bypassing conventional banks. Here's a link to a description to how it works.
Cool--thanks!
To whom it may concern,
I added a response to the Freecycle blog and wish to further communications on this subject. It appears to me that our world is rapidly blending the anarchist foundations within socialism with the anarchist foundations within capitalism arriving at mutualism or “Equitable Commerce” so long as the popularity of despotism continues to decline and technology continues to advance. How many people vote these days?
hey, just found this blog and i wanted to say thanks, it's fantastic.
-dj, from shreveport (currently residing in massachusetts)
Thanks for the nice comments, Josf and donald.
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