Our Wonkcast this week covers two separate topics and two international figures recently in the news. First, Muhammad Yunus is considered the father of microfinance as the founder of Grameen Bank. Why then has he been removed from his post? What does it mean for the future of Grameen? Following up, we discuss another Nobel peace prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, and the future of Burmese debt.
Europe does it. Australia does it. Even northeastern-situated states do it. Everyone's doing it. Let's do it. Let's tax carbon.
Last September, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon pointed to the nuclear accidents in Chernobyl and Fukushima as proof of the need for transparency in nuclear safety worldwide. In February, his office released a Five-Year Action Agenda for his second term; it calls on the global community to make foreign aid more transparent.
Muhammad Yunus has been forced by a Bangladesh court to step down as the head of the Grameen Bank, leaving the world to wonder what will become of the institution that helped inspire the microfinance revolution. On this week’s Wonkcast, we consider the rise and uncertain future of microcredit, not so long ago the darling of development experts and activists alike, and discuss whether or not the arc of Yunus’s remarkable life serves as an apt metaphor for the microfinance movement.
My guest is CGD senior fellow David Roodman, who has been tracking the Yunus trial since it began as part of his Microfinance Open Book Blog. The book in public on the blog, Due Diligence: An Impertinent Inquiry into Microfinance, is nearing completion and will be published before the end of the year.
A crisis is unfolding in India's microcredit sector that-- beyond its immediate effects on borrowers and lenders-- will greatly affect the future of financial services for the poor.
My guest on this week’s show is David Roodman, a research fellow here at CGD who has spent the past year writing a book on microfinance. He has shared this experience online through his open book blog, posting chapter drafts, analyzing ongoing research in the field, and soliciting comments and suggestions.
Congratulations to Sweden for ranking first in CGD’s 2009 Commitment to Development Index (CDI) for the first time since the creation of the Index in 2003. The United States, meanwhile, manages only a meager 17th place among the 22 wealthy countries ranked.
Over on my microfinance "open book" blog, I posted a digest of what is arguably the first gold standard evaluation of a storied anti-poverty intervention, microcredit. Given the paper's historic nature and its resonance with CGD themes of impact evaluation and finance, the post may particularly interest those who follow the present blog, Voices from the Center.