Microminds Prize

I was reseaching last week on Bangladesh; millions living in squalor working themselves to death in textile factories, living on less than a dollar a day, etc. The country is the world's #1 producer of jute and jute is real trendy now.

The Bangladesh government has stubbornly tried to attain better trade status with the US, paying DC lobbyists in hopes of more duty-free access to US markets.

The country is 135 million squeezed into an area the size of Wisconsin. Over half the population in poverty. Predominantly Muslim.

Microcredit has been around for decades and touted as a near miracle idea for the world's poor although somehow the world's number of poor just keeps growing and growing and growing. Grameen's "cell of 5 people borrowing together" appeared more a pyramid scheme to me so I was checking into it when professor Yunus and Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Surprise surprise, Grameen Bank funded by UN and other organizations, and you know my stand on big-dot-org as savior.

Grameen and the professor are hooking up the poor with cell phones. Good old fashioned shiny baubles and bangles capitalism for hoveltown.

I found Jeffrey Tucker over at Ludwig von Mises (who I don't always agree with) has a 1995 article that pretty much sums up Grameen and company.

Bangladesh would be better served had the professor used his talents to remedy the slave wage factory labor of women and children.