Independent research for global prosperity
I have a piece in the Washington Post this week based on my book. I'm told it will appear on the front page of the Outlook section of Sunday's print edition. It will look familiar to you if you follow this blog:
The Norwegian network NRK, which aired the original Tom Heinemann documentary, just posted two letters that continue the controversy the film started.
As an interviewee in Tom Heinemann's documentary, I received a copy of the English version in the mail last Thursday. Compared to the Norwegian one (blogged here), the English version devotes less time to the old spat between Norway and the Grameen Bank, cuts other stuff I haven't tried to determine, and travels beyond Bangladesh, to India, Nigeria, and Mexico.
A few weeks after Norwegian television premiered Tom Heinemann's documentary, which aims squarely at Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank, the Grameen Foundation asked to interview me for a video response. The Foundation is a Washington-based charity that was started in the late 1990s to propagate the Grameen Bank's credit model to other nations.
[Update: To compare Compartamos to its Mexican peers on price, read this next.]
BBC journalist Madeleine Morris, with producer Leo Hornak, has filed two versions of her report on the Andhra Pradesh microfinance crisis, one audio and one video (below). I think the audio one is particularly good, being twice as long. Both give a good sense of the complexities of the situation, showing the good and the bad. I am not in either.
Last November 30, Tom Heinemann premiered his documentary Fanget i mikrogjeld (Caught in Microdebt). It showed women in Bangladesh saying they had lost a home or contemplated suicide because of microcredit; revealed an old dispute between the Grameen Bank and Norway over the use of aid funds; and charged Grameen with charging borrowers 30% interest.
The New York Times has published an opinion piece by Muhammad Yunus on how to keep microcredit on this side of usury:
MFTransparency just released the definitive analysis of the interest rates of the Grameen Bank. Bottom line: Grameen's rates are low---close to 20% for the standard loan product---and accurately disclosed. And the report is excellent, a model of the transparency it preaches to others.
On Tuesday, Norway's Ministry of Foreign Affairs released the results of a quick investigation of an old dispute between it and the Grameen Bank, which was revealed to the public a week earlier by Tom Heinemann's documentary for the Norwegian television program Brennpunkt.
Concludes the Minister:
