Free Republic

The winding roads into the valley of Nebaj are lined with advertisements for cheap loans. Banks and cooperatives and microfinance operations make their pitches: “Credit in three days.” “Funding for your small business.” “We’ve lowered our interest rates!” U.S. officials have long touted the power of finance to lift people out of poverty — and backed loans to farmers and small-business owners across the developing world. But here in the Guatemala Highlands, the epicenter of the country’s migrant exodus, those loans often fund a different activity, the region’s most profitable: Smuggling migrants north to the United States. Over the past...

eBay Founder Pierre Omidyar is starting a news outlet called First Look Media. In the site's animated video, he describes it as "a new kind of marriage between a technology company and a new kind of newsroom," and that one of its goals will be to "make it easier for journalists to deliver the transformative stories we all need." Omidyar is known as a philanthropist, and has put his money where his mouth is (in this case, he is reportedly investing $250 million in the First Look venture). His Omidyar Network - with its funding of many altruistic initiatives such...

Since Obama has raised the alarm about alleged Russian espionage activity, it’s appropriate to shine a spotlight on his own administration’s connections to Soviet-era spy rings and terrorist networks. Obama and two of his key advisors, Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod, were raised by families with members who are known either to have been in contact with Soviet agents or to have belonged to the Communist Party (CP) at a time when the CP was controlled by the Soviet Union. Associates of Obama’s campaign team and Jarrett’s family interacted with agents linked to the famous pair of spy rings known...

Bangladesh bank offers loans to US poor By Daniel Pimlott in New York Published: February 15 2008 Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank has made its first loans in New York in an attempt to bring its pioneering microfinance techniques to the tens of millions of people in the world’s richest country who have no bank account. The bank’s entry into the US, its first in a developed market, comes as mainstream banks’ credibility has been hit by the mortgage meltdown and many people are turning to fringe financial institutions offering loans at exorbitant interest rates.

DHAKA, Bangladesh - The simple yet revolutionary idea of loaning tiny sums to poor people looking to escape poverty by starting businesses won Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. Yunus' notion - today, known as microcredit - has spread around the globe in the past three decades and is said to have helped more than 100 million people take their first steps to rise out of poverty. Some bought diary cows, others egg-laying hens. In recent years, money for a single cell phone has been enough to start thriving enterprises...

OSLO (AFP) - Attack the causes of poverty and you remove the roots of conflict -- that is the message the Nobel Committee wanted to send out by awarding its Peace Prize to the creator of a micro-credit scheme which benefits millions, analysts said on Friday. Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus, the so-called "Banker to the Poor", and the Grameen Bank he founded three decades ago were the surprise winners of the award for pioneering a system of small-scale loans that has helped 6.6 million people escape the grind of poverty. As the head of the Nobel Committee, Ole Danbolt Mjoes,...

After the latest bombshell, Congressmen and Senators are calling for the Clinton email scandal to be re-opened! Yesterday, the Trump administration quietly released even more of Hillary Clinton's previously-unreleased emails and it includes a bombshell. There is now (concrete evidence) that Hillary Clinton emailed classified information to people outside of the government and asked them to print out a hard copy for her and Bill. This is one of the emails that the Obama administration tried to hide. In it, Hillary Clinton is seen forwarding 2-3 pages worth of classified information to Doug Band. If that name sounds familiar, he...

"..this blog focused upon the Obama regime's nefarious plans to enslave the 3rd world to debt, as this blog traced Stanley Ann Dunham Obama Soetoro's sadistic plans as a once sociologist who became a banker for the globalist Ford Foundation, under Tim Geithner's old man's direction in Indochina..........to create a syndicate which started out of European finance to lend money to the poverty stricken, which was termed MICROFINANCE."

Bicycles instead of cars? Dense apartment clusters instead of single homes? Community rituals instead of churches? "Human rights" instead of religious freedom? The UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) which met June 3-14 [1996]in Istanbul, painted an alarming picture of the 21st century community. The American ways-free speech, individualism, travel, and Christianity-are out. A new set of economic, environmental, and social guidelines are in. Citizenship, democracy, and education have been redefined. Handpicked civil leaders will implement UN "laws", bypassing state and national representatives to work directly with the UN. And politically correct "tolerance"-meaning "the rejection of dogmatism and absolutism"...

Tucked away on the 10th floor of South Beretania apartments in Honolulu, Hawaii is quite a woman, the one engineered profile online suggests for Madelyn Lee Payne Dunham, the grandmother who raised Barack Hussein Obama when he was abandoned by his mother, but for the wonder woman profile which was created online, the one question jumps out that no one has noticed: If Madelyn Dunham was thee woman as her profile states who paved the way for all women in banking, thee woman who raised Barack Obama, then why is Barack Obama running away from this woman, why is she...

Part 1: Introductions Picture a future where your right to privacy is a thing of the past. Where your government, doctor, retail stores, your home, your neighbor, and you keep accurate details of every transaction you make, whom you associate with, the amount of every and any goods you use, where you worship, your impact on the planet, your impact on your community, and any other piece of data that can be recorded as it pertains to your life. Many of us have seen articles and books that advocate for just such a world. Many more of us have read...

Princess Máxima of the Netherlands, special advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General on financial access, has reiterated her plea to allow people in poor countries easier access to financial services, which she said would play a vital role in changing their economic lives.

KIRUK — It was only a few months ago that a terrorist incident in this northern Iraq city destroyed most of the stock of a local pharmacy, leaving a family-owned business in tatters and depriving the community of much needed medication. In a spark of hope for moving beyond the insurgency, however, the pharmacy and the services it provides to the community will soon be fully restored. In mid-July, the family took out a loan – the equivalent of $3,000 in Iraqi dinars – to replenish the stock and rebuild their business. Small as it may sound, the amount means...

Rome, 2 Dec. (AKI) - What started out as a credit scheme to help 42 people with 27 dollars in a small village in Bangladesh in 1976, is today a bank helping 5.5 million borrowers nationwide disbursing up to 75 million dollars every month. The Grameen Bank was established by Professor Muhammad Yunus to help the rural poor in Bangladesh by providing credit to the poorest of the poor without any collateral. In an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI), Dipal Chandra Barua, deputy managing director, explained how this microcredit system has succeeded in countries around the globe. "Bangladesh is a...