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Bangladesh bankers to the poor win Nobel Peace Prize
My Way News ^

Posted on 10/13/2006 5:47:48 AM PDT by sonsofliberty2000

Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for grassroots efforts to lift millions out of poverty that earned him the nickname "banker to the poor."

Yunus, 66, set up a new kind of bank in 1976 to lend to the very poorest in his native Bangladesh, particularly women, enabling them to start up small businesses without collateral.

In doing so, he pioneered microcredit, a system copied in more than 100 nations from the United States to Uganda.

"It's very happy news for me and also for the nation. But it has burdened us with further responsibility," he told reporters at his home in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka.

"Now the war against poverty will be further intensified across the world. It will consolidate the struggle against poverty through microcredit in most of the countries."

"There should be no poverty, anywhere."

The secretive five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee said the elimination of poverty was a path to peace and democracy.

"Across cultures and civilizations, Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development," it said in the award citation.

"Lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty. Microcredit is one such means. Development from below also serves to advance democracy and human rights," the committee added.

Yunus and Grameen were surprise picks for the 10 million Swedish crown ($1.36 million) award from a field of 191 candidates. The prize will be handed out in Oslo on December 10.

"This is the last prize. That's what's so special about it ... it's the sky," Yunus told Norwegian television.

Returning from a Fulbright scholarship in the United States, Yunus was shaken by the 1974 Bangladesh famine and headed out into the villages to see what he could do.

He discovered the region's women were in severe debt to extortionate moneylenders. Yunus's initial goal was simply to persuade a local bank manager to give villagers regular credit, which the banker said was impossible without a guarantee.

Yunus set out to prove him wrong and never looked back. Grameen -- the word means "village" or "rural" in the Bangla language -- has lent $5.72 billion since it began. Of this, $5.07 billion has been repaid, a recovery rate of 98.85 percent.

SELF-SUSTAINING

The bank, which has turned a profit in all but three years, lends to 6.6 million people, 96 percent of them women, and has not received donor money in eight years. It counts beggars among its members, giving them interest-free loans and life insurance.

Today the bank is owned by the rural poor it serves, with 94 percent owned by borrowers and the rest by the government.

"In Bangladesh, where nothing works and there's no electricity," Yunus once said, "microcredit works like clockwork."

Nobel Committee Chairman Ole Danbolt Mjoes told Reuters: "This idea was generated in a mostly Muslim country and then fantastically spread to the wle world in a positive way.

He added: "We want to send a signal to the whole world that the fight against poverty is one of the most important things we are doing."

The U.N. aims to halve the share of the world's population living in the deepest poverty, some 1 billion people, by 2015.

Yunus said he was looking forward to visiting Oslo to receive the prize. "Definitely I'm going to come," he said.

Former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, whose own International Crisis Group had been tipped as a possible winner this year, said Yunus was an "outstanding choice."

"It's been a stunning way of generating income and really changing lives for so many people in the developing world," Evans said of the Grameen Bank's efforts.

"It's one of those inspirational, groundbreaking innovations that only come along every now and again, and I think it's highly appropriate and I congratulate him."

(Additional reporting by Alister Doyle, Sarah Edmonds, Marianne Fronsdal and Wojciech Moskwa in Oslo, Paul Taylor in Brussels)


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: nobel; nobelprize
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To: scory
I'm thinking that the avwrage loan is far less than a 'couple of thousand $', scory. Or perhaps it started out that way - $100-500 is a stunning amount of money over there, especially in the rural cttage industries where Grameen got its start. ...

these were the people who would borrow a couple of thousand $ or so and get themselves started

21 posted on 10/13/2006 7:21:44 AM PDT by Ready4Freddy (We didn't have air conditioned schools, we had ROCKS! And we LIKED it!! ;>)
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To: Ready4Freddy
People think usury means to lend money at interest, or at excessive interest. But it should be understood to mean any attempt by a person or organization to place his neighbors in such a situation that they face hopeless debt bondage.

Many (thousands!) Indian farmers have committed suicide because they have gotten into a relationship with U.S. seed companies that force them to buy new seeds every growing season; they are prohibited from saving seed for the next season. Even if they did save the seed, they are probably hybrid so that the next generation does not produce. Either way the farmers must agree not to save seeds.

Nobody held a gun to their heads and made them take the deals. Likely the farmers were promised great profits by planting these special seeds (Jack and the Beanstalk magic beans), and are not sophisticated enough to smell the rat and refuse, much like Americans believe real estate only goes up and are not sophisticated to know ARMs which will reset, payments nearly double on overpriced real estate. The arrangement for the Indian farmers is uneconomic and delivers financial disaster (hopeless indebtedness) to the farmer, if you can imagine it being any worse for them than it already is. When the farmers go from having near nothing to owing thousands they know they can never repay, they stop wanting to live.

You'd think the seed companies would realize their mistake, take pity and forgive the Indian farmers their debts. I'd like to see a bankruptcy judge be available to discharge the debts of these farmers so they can at least start out again where they left off and be debt free again, hopefully having learned a lesson, but still be alive. And let the U.S. seed companies find another way to make a buck, economically, without ruining Indian farmers.

I would actually recommend that this bank add #17: not to use any but seeds except nonhybrid that can be saved and freely planted the following season. Always reserve the right to save seeds for use the next year. Never accept a contract that has terms threatening that right.

22 posted on 10/13/2006 7:39:32 AM PDT by Jason_b
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To: RayChuang88

Good question. Government corruption.


23 posted on 10/13/2006 7:44:34 AM PDT by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch ist der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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To: Jason_b
Thanks for your comments, jason. Your points about seed companies are well-taken. Your first paragraph, however, does bring up an 'interesting' (no pun intended? :) point - I wonder how the Grameen program side-stepped the islamic prohibition against interest.

People think usury means to lend money at interest, or at excessive interest. But it should be understood to mean any attempt by a person or organization to place his neighbors in such a situation that they face hopeless debt bondage.

24 posted on 10/13/2006 7:52:24 AM PDT by Ready4Freddy (We didn't have air conditioned schools, we had ROCKS! And we LIKED it!! ;>)
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To: sonsofliberty2000

ITS NOT CINDY SHEEGOAT ... I AM SHOCKED I TELL YOU ... SHOCKED


25 posted on 10/13/2006 7:57:26 AM PDT by RainMan
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To: Jason_b

Forgot to mention - in keeping with you comments about 'debt bondage', it appears that Grameen has managed to avoid that by making repayment terms manageable. That, and the concept of making micro-loans w/o collateral, are the program's revolutionary aspects.


26 posted on 10/13/2006 7:58:02 AM PDT by Ready4Freddy (We didn't have air conditioned schools, we had ROCKS! And we LIKED it!! ;>)
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To: You Dirty Rats
Good point, YDR. I too noted the lack of snarky comments re: the recipients' origins. Perhaps the most objectionable aspects of the program, from an FR point of view, is that Grameen Bank is owned ~90% by the borrowers (probably not unlike our old Mutual savings and loans, and insurance companies that have mostly gone by the wayside now), and ~10% by the Bangledeshi govt.

I mentioned elsewhere that the most important aspects of this program are 1) - the concept of making micro-loans w/o collateral, and 2) - making repayment terms manageable.

I was also very glad to see that the committee split the prize between Yunus and Grameen.

Fact is that we will always applaud people who make their own success and add to the world instead of take from it.

27 posted on 10/13/2006 8:11:59 AM PDT by Ready4Freddy (We didn't have air conditioned schools, we had ROCKS! And we LIKED it!! ;>)
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To: RayChuang88
Mexico alert - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1718612/posts?page=54#54

This would work fabulously in southern Mexico...

28 posted on 10/13/2006 8:20:39 AM PDT by Ready4Freddy (We didn't have air conditioned schools, we had ROCKS! And we LIKED it!! ;>)
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To: FrPR

*groan*


29 posted on 10/13/2006 8:40:39 AM PDT by sonsofliberty2000
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To: sonsofliberty2000

Now that is a much better choice than the socialist elite blow-hards who do nothing for 'ordinary' people.


30 posted on 10/13/2006 9:11:40 AM PDT by expatpat
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To: FrPR

LOL! That was so wrong...


31 posted on 10/13/2006 9:28:12 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (North Korea is a rogue and illegal regime. https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: indcons

Of course, lending for interest is usury, so if that's what's going on here, a heavily armed Moslem mob will be arriving to gun everyone down in the bank, then burn down the building.


32 posted on 10/13/2006 9:29:29 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (North Korea is a rogue and illegal regime. https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: sonsofliberty2000

Didn't Amadeo Giannini- founder of the modern day Bank of America- do the same thing?


33 posted on 10/13/2006 10:11:28 AM PDT by Sabramerican (Bush Doctrine- Old: Fight terrorists. New: Cease fire with terrorists.)
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To: soccermom
Did the Moveon.org thugs not get to the committee in time?

Don't know. Jimmuh already has his (snicker, snicker) peace prize and can be referred to as a Nobel Laureate, which probably makes Rosalyn happy.

Maybe Moveon didn't push Cindy hard enough. I'm sure she's broken hearted.

34 posted on 10/13/2006 2:47:42 PM PDT by Ole Okie
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