Free Republic

A major contributor to President Barack Obama's re-election effort is accused of defrauding a businessman and impersonating a bank official. Donor Abake Assongba gave more than $50,000 to Obama this election season. But her past legal troubles, which include unpaid debts, are creating a new headache for Obama's campaign. The allegations were first reported Sunday by The Washington Post. ..

NEW YORK—When Amy Sokoloff and John Powell were trying to start their art restoration business in New York City, they needed some working capital. But banks weren’t willing to take a chance on them. “We didn’t own anything — no houses, no cars, we had no collateral,” Sokoloff said. Powell added, “No one wanted to talk to us. They were not interested, and they were not nice about it.” Sokoloff and Powell ended up on the doorstep of ACCION USA, a not-for-profit group patterned after the Third World microfinance institutions best known for providing money to Moroccan farmers for breeding...

Chennai: 'Slumdog Millionaire' has a fan in Home Minister P Chidambaram, who said on Saturday that its theme should inspire banks to provide loans to budding entrepreneurs from slums which are humming with business ideas. Chidamabaram cited the movie portraying the rags to riches story of a boy from Mumbai slum as an example to show that young boys and girls from slums are not lagging behind corporate India. "Please watch the movie after its release," he said speaking at the launch of the International Financial Corporation-Venture East-Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust (an NGO)-sponsored fund to promote grassroots entrepreneurship in India....

If the turbulent economy has you ready to stuff your mattress with your savings, here’s how to get a better return for your money — while helping to alleviate global poverty to boot. MicroPlace (microplace.com), an eBay-owned business, connects the working poor to would-be lenders, allowing you to invest as little as $20 to get a one to three percent return on your investment — a better rate than offered by many savings accounts. MicroPlace uses your money to fund organizations that make loans to people working to lift themselves out of poverty. Like the popular micro-lending site Kiva.org, MicroPlace...

FEW people in Africa would get to see Al Gore and his troupe of rock-star ecologists strutting their stuff last weekend - because most have neither television nor electricity. That's just as well, because they would be aghast at LiveEarth's bizarre message. In Africa, we have much more serious things to worry about than climate change. Indeed, if they achieve their objective, the concerts will have done harm to the people of Africa. Britain's former Secretary of State for the Environment, David Miliband, recently said that the rest of the world cannot aspire to the UK's standard of living because:...

The U.S. provides more than $15 billion in aid (not counting substantial aid in Iraq as part of reconstruction) to countries around the world every year. Because of the nature of government, some of it works, but much of it gets sucked up by either the bureaucracies or corruption of both the giving and receiving countries. The World Bank is plagued by the same problems: Kickbacks, payoffs, bribery, embezzlement, and collusive bidding plague bank-funded projects around the world, a U.S. News analysis shows. The scale of the problem is enormous: Knowledgeable analysts believe corrupt practices of one type or another...

CONSUELO,D.R. - It's late afternoon in a neighborhood called El Cachipero, in Sammy Sosa's hometown. Gisiene Salamon is behind the counter at her place of business, 12 square feet of beaten-up boards topped by a rusted tin roof. She is wearing a frayed flowered house dress and a comb in her hair. Two half-clad toddlers are clamped around her ankles.On the shelves behind Salamon are 21 eggs that she sells individually, a few canned goods and bags of snacks. Hanging in front are four bags of rolls. The neighborhood gets its name from the ashes that spew from nearby sugar...