"Where else would you go when you have an ax to grind?"

Showing posts with label brother can you spare a dime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brother can you spare a dime. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

people helping people are the luckiest people

How did I not know about this? This is the very idea that won the Nobel Peace Prize a couple of years ago and now its gone viral on the intertubes. Apparently the payback rate on these loans is over 95% - maybe Citibank and Bank of America need to take some lessons.

Kiva's mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.
Kiva is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs around the globe.


The people you see on Kiva's site are real individuals in need of funding - not marketing material. When you browse entrepreneurs' profiles on the site, choose someone to lend to, and then make a loan, you are helping a real person make great strides towards economic independence and improve life for themselves, their family, and their community. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates and track repayments. Then, when you get your loan money back, you can relend to someone else in need.



The website lets you loan as little as $25, bundling it into a larger loan. Kiva lets you form or join groups and tracks which groups contribute the most. It should surprise no one that the second largest contributing group are the "Kiva Christians" -- the largest being "Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious."

I'll be looking for a suitable borrower on the site and posting info here for anyone else who wants to help out.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Fisted by the invisible hand of the marketplace
All those middle and upperclass white retirees that were planning to vote for John McCain might want to think again now that their retirement plans are going to include a lot more Alpo than arugula.

The next person who tells me that government should be run like a business gets a punch in the throat. While bringing back the public stocks (as opposed to the stock market) has a certain visceral appeal, something else is also called for. Maybe John McCain can take another day off from campaigning. After all, he was all in favour of investing America's Social Security funds in the stock market as recently as six months ago and two weeks ago told us the fundementals of the economy were strong, so clearly he knows what he's talking about.
Meanwhile, the peasantry seem to be getting restless. I think the smart money is now in pitchfork and torches futures and the tar and feather commodities.