On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 3:15 PM, Deb Ranjan Sinha <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

And the guy is a geographer by training!

*Six million adults in Britain do not have access to a bank account. These are
the people for whom credit has always crunched. Of these at least four million
each week borrow from "doorstep lenders" just as they did when Rahman's parents
first came to Britain and just as they have done since Victorian times. Another
million and a half people are indebted to so-called "payday lenders", the mostly
American-owned high street operations – the Money Shop, Cash Converters and the
rest – who make short-term loans with few questions asked at APRs that often
start at 600% and can escalate to 2,500% or more. "When I tell people that is
the financial reality of Britain," Rahman says, "they don't at first take it on
board. But to unlock that system, it seemed to me, you cannot approach it only
as a money-making business – though that must certainly be part of the aim. You
need to also explicably do things that don't make money."*

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/mar/21/microfinance-faisel-rahman-muhammad-yunus