Microcredit: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly by David Korten

Microcredit: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly by David Korten:

"Once praised as a universal panacea, microlenders are now being widely attacked as predatory loan sharks. In December 2010, Sheik Hasina Wazed, the prime minister of Bangladesh and former microcredit advocate, accused microcredit programs of “sucking blood from the poor in the name of poverty alleviation.”

What happened?

It turns out there are two very different models of microcredit. As Muhammad Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize, pointed out in his January 15, 2011 New York Times op-ed, one type of microcredit program is designed to serve the poor; another to maximize financial returns"

Will be used in class. Read the whole thing. Look for any bias by author. That said, still a very interesting and important piece.