<![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer - Gawker Comments]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer - Gawker Comments]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @genevieveyorke: There's bad practices in any type of lending, of course, but this piece really misrepresents microfinance in a shameful and ignorant manner, which is sad, because a lot of people who might have given to microloan funds from respectable and non-predatory org.'s read Gawker and might now dismiss microfinance.

Claystil

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @carrieindc: okay, i'm not arguing that microfinance is a koolaid that has been poisoned, but everyone sure is drinking it up. if that metaphor makes any sense.

microfinance is popular beyond its anti-poverty power right now. the results don't match the hype. true fact!

genevieveyorke

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @moff: My grandmother gives everyone heifers as holiday gifts. It's awesome.

Cthulhah Bankhead

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> Question - Is this Natalie Portman/FINCA blurb supposed to be about international development or simply an excuse to talk shit on a celebrity that has fallen out favor with the Gawker crowd? Because it seems a hell of a lot like the latter.

There is volumes of evidence that microfinance is a hugely successful market-based development initiative that has lifted people out of poverty on every inhabited continent. Microcredit is not loan-sharking! Interest rates do remain high, but loan sharking is what locals would experience if microcredit weren't made available to them (local lenders charge far higher interest rates to the poor). Poor management practices exist in every industry, including international development, but this does not mean the idea is fundamentally flawed in the least. As a specialist in the field, I must tell you that nowhere in my World Bank Microfinance Handbook does it teach that best practices include encouraging borrowers to sell their your children as collateral. Are you fucking kidding me?!!! How could you possibly take such an accusation even remotely seriously?

Yet obviously to Gawker, a French journalist who writes an ill-informed, 300-word article on the topic and concludes with the completely erroneous statement that "It is impossible to obtain an interview with Mohammed Yunus, and the Grameen Bank headquarters are off-limits for journalists who are too curious" holds far more credibility than a Nobel Prize winner and the measured successes of millions of loan recipients worldwide. (FYI: I was freely granted interviews with Grameen bankers as a meager grad student and I had a professor who quite easily got an interview with Yunus)

I lost a ton of respect for the Gawker today. It's absolutely misrepresenting the microfinance movement and doing a disservice to people who were previously unaware of microcredit and now have formed opinions on the topic based on such a biased and ludicrous post.

If anyone actually wants to learn about what microfinance is and does they should check out the articles on following websites as well as the impressive statistics for Grameen Bank:

[www.cgap.org]

[www.grameen-info.org]

Though now I have no choice but assume that the articles may be too dense and "scholarly" for Gawker editors to digest…

carrieindc

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> WHAT THE FUCK???

You get a few bad apples and the whole thing is a bad idea? Geezuz!

Did anyone take statistics in high school?

To those who use credit cards to bridge the gap between your needs now and your cash flows later, you are fucking HYPOCRITES.

backseat_driver10023

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> I'm late to the party but I have to jump on the bandwagon, NP sucks, she's a moron, she should hangout with Darryl Hannah.

Fishman

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> If only Lincoln had been able to implement his 'money policy' before being assassinated...

[www.cfoss.com]

mz_wysiwyg

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> it's not just hollywood that loves microlending, it's fucking EVERYONE who loves it.

also, would you mind debunking the supposed awesomeness of ethanol while you're at it?

anyway, i so totally should be writing my major paper right now, which is about microfinance's place in the history of development schemes. but instead i'm on gawker!

of course, it should be said that microfinance does sometime do good and not ill. many times it is a better credit option than the local moneylender. but it just isn't a panacea for poverty.

genevieveyorke

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> So the point of this story is tht Natalie Potman is evil?

namesake

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @valarmorghulis: Okay! Now fit that into the rhythm of "They Can't Take That Away From Me."

DorothyMantooth

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> >> Giving away money to poor people promotes the notion that they cant make smart decisions if given access to credit instead. In fact, loaning money rather than giving it away, promotes ownership and responsibility over the borrowed funds. <<

Damn Bangladeshi Welfare Queens, that's what they is! Why, what those people needs is bootstraps! Because I have a dream. A dream where millions of Bangladeshis learn responsibility so that they can rise up from lowly goat-owning peons to lofty sweatshop workers making Hannah Montana children's tees. The world is flat, baby!

gawkimo

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @DorothyMantooth: ehem..."Wear your hat, to be like Pat (Buchanan)"

valarmorghulis

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @ADismalScience: No, not you. I meant as a silver lining to true poverty. Truly poor people have a total corner on moral indignation!

Moff

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @La Cieca: Here here, there's something a little off about this news report, and I don't think it's just because I actually like and support the idea of microcredit. France24 barely provides any information on this for me to cross reference and it seems like an attempt to vilify something everybody has liked to stir up controversy and views.

I do like the New Yorker article much better, which shows the limits of microcredit without going into SHOCK AND AWE mode.

Elaine Chow

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @allyzay: by which i'm implying you should never, ever pay sprint.

allyzay

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @moff:

I don't do moral indignation. The world's too complicated. I just try to determine the reason why things are they way they are.

ADismalScience

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @EvidenceOfAbsence: we're just screwed. sprint sucks anyway, i had the worst time using their cell service, my phone got cloned WEEKLY. wtf?

allyzay

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @TheHonJudgeSmails: They're too scrawny, dude. All gristle, and no marbling. I'm holding out for the restaurant that'll serve up wealthy fatties: Kobe beef to cannibals.

Adminitraitor

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @moff: You & Dis & I are gonna have a Sinatra sing-along, ain't we?
What means "moral indignation" and rhymes with "wear your hat"?

DorothyMantooth

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> Shit...actually, I think I was supposed to call my collection agency today. It's like Pareene is psychic or something.

What about those of us who are suffering because of macro-loans? Or because we kind of forgot to pay a Sprint bill like 6 years ago? I demand justice.

EvidenceOfAbsence

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @ADismalScience: You can take organs, provided they are not too badly damaged by malnutrition.

4Cats

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @ADismalScience: What about the sense of moral indignation?

Moff

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @Dis: Dude actually says in his Colbert interview that they don't take any collateral.

DorothyMantooth

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @moff: There's a Bill-Murray-in-Caddyshack joke to be made there somehow. But I'm sleepy.

DorothyMantooth

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> In America, if you default on your loan payment, there's usually something to take. The house, the car - some asset can be reclaimed.

An African microloan? Well, there isn't much to reclaim if it goes sour, which is why non-charity organizations usually won't come close to these places. All you can really take from these people if they don't come up with the payment are their children, women, and hard labor.

It's better than letting everyone starve to death, I guess. Not pleasant, but nothing about true poverty is.

ADismalScience

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> You have to check out Grameen Bank's 16 Decisions (its tenets, if you will). [en.wikipedia.org]

My favorite is number 9: We shall build and use pit-latrines. This comes after the all important Decision No. 8: We shall always keep our children and the environment clean.

overunderover

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> But she's Harvard educated!!!

They're above scorn.
[www.thecrimson.com]

Botswana Meat Commission FC

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> To be fair, France 24 actually does tell both sides of the story. Synopsis of the very end of the video:

Long shot of woman holding a portrait in front of the fire. Her husband is described as a "martyr of the Grameen Bank" who committed suicide because he was overburdened with debt.

Finally, 20 seconds of voiceover, during which the credits roll: "Suicide. The ultimate refuge. A taboo that still hasn't been explored. No independent research on the matter. Officially, three out of four Grameen borrowers get out of poverty. Grameen has more than 100 million customers in the world. Their aim is to have 500 million loan takers by 2020."

EvidenceOfAbsence

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> What the world needs now
Is debt sweet debt
It's the only thing
That deserves such interest

What the world needs now
Is debt sweet debt
Not just in trailer parks
But in Asian slums!

MisterHippity

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @DorothyMantooth: Robert Heinlein said something in Stranger in a Strange Land about how most people have to reach the eighth level of awareness before they're willing to accept anything for free. Something like that.

Moff

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @Somebody: it makes me so hot when people get all paternalistic and condescending about the poors, do go on.

allyzay

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]>

There's a micro-loan agency in Mexico that just had an IPO, Compartamos, returns are supposed to be un-fucking-real:

[www.portfolio.com]

4Cats

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> the idea of micro-loans is based in capitalism, the prevailing global economic model, to which gains and losses are inherent.

micro-credit is essentially just tossing someone the ball so they can get in on playing the only game in town.

Julio Allison

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> If they start colonizing the countries with Scotsmen, too, we'll know once and for all that the English are behind it. Again.

Hipp

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @spikenard:
The micro finance organizations are no more homogenous a group than Gawker commenters. And in societies where being widowed traditionally leaves you dependent on hand-outs, many of the reputable agencies will lend money to women to enable them to carry on their husbands' businesses or set up for themselves.

It's important to see past the snark once in a while. But NatPo is still a self-righteous prig.

youreabigjessie

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @DorothyMantooth: "however," you dolt

DorothyMantooth

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @Somebody: To be serious for just one moment here, you make a very important point.

I used to work with a woman who grew up in Haiti who told me that when various medicines were sent over there and given away to the residents for free, folks had utterly no appreciation for them, and would even fail to take them. When the same medicines were sold to the Haitian people, whoever, even at nominal prices, the Haitians actually prized and treasured the drugs, and took them religiously.
So... There's that.

Also? Smails wets the bed.

DorothyMantooth

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> Well, I have seen quite a few pics of Mssss. Portman walking around with some homeless guy lately, or is that her boyfriend?

brazenbull

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> To be fair, they also gave the Nobel Peace Prize to Yasser Arafat and Henry Kissinger. Look for your Nobel Peace Prize in specially marked boxes of Cheerios.

TheRtHonPM

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @Somebody: Well put.

Can you loan me $500 for a new PC?

VirusWithShoes

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> So, when did Gawker stop actually reading the news? Surowiecki weighed in on mircrofinancing last month:
[www.newyorker.com]

Brawndo

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> To be, you know, that person: Isn't the above the equivalent of saying that, because some mortgage lenders engaged in predatory practices, nobody in America should ever get a mortgage ever, ever again, and all mortgages are bunk?

If Grameen Bank is actually dicking up this bad, it's a big deal. But that doesn't automatically invalidate the concept or practice of microcredit. Something, something, babies, bathwater—Natalie Portman or not.

EvidenceOfAbsence

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @scroll_lock: That's only because he likes them passed out before he violates them.

Conbon

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> Giving away money to poor people promotes the notion that they cant make smart decisions if given access to credit instead. In fact, loaning money rather than giving it away, promotes ownership and responsibility over the borrowed funds. Borrowers tend to repay loans at an astonishing rate and often bring themselves out of abject poverty. Like anything that is implemented on such a large scale, there are going to be some cases of misuse and abuse. It's easy to forget, in a country where credit opportunities are thrown at us in excess, how paralyzing it can be not to have access to banking opportunities - and criticize these programs.

Somebody

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @TheHonJudgeSmails: I think it's cute that you finally named your Real Doll. Also a little creepy.

Conbon

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @TheHonJudgeSmails: @Conbon: Conbon, Smails has sentenced boys younger than you to the gas chamber. Didn't want to do it. Felt he owed it to them.

scroll_lock

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @Conbon: That's how they get ya.

@VirusWithShoes: Now you tell me?
(Ha!)

DorothyMantooth

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @DorothyMantooth: It was Colbert.

DorothyMantooth

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @Conbon: This kind of mother-degrading talk is exactly what I was telling Noelle about when we were lazing about our comfortable bedroom late last Sunday morning.

TheHonJudgeSmails

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> Did they just interview 1 set of villagers? There doesn't seem to be enough evidence in this tiny report that the whole thing is a bad idea- I'm sure not everyone who borrows from the Grameen Bank is committing suicide or selling their children? This report seems really generalised and extreme. I say this, of course, without having read anything more - but I'd like more info.

spikenard

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @TheHonJudgeSmails: You're just jealous that your mom isn't a cartoon character. Crackwhores don't make good cartoon characters, dummy.

Conbon

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> There are foundations that give money, services, and products to the poor. Microcredit isn't meant to replace them. It's meant as a resource to keep working people in their own small businesses that earn money. Yes, they charge interest, but (a) they charge less than the usual rate in any particular country; and (b) they give loans in small amounts, which most banks won't do, and give to people who don't have a credit history, another thing most banks won't do. Unless you're some American idiot who thinks you deserve a McMansion even though you earn minimum wage, a loan is a good thing.

GollyG

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @DorothyMantooth: It was Colbert. Now, I don't know who to trust.

VirusWithShoes

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @DorothyMantooth: It's micro-interest. By which I mean it's printed really small on the contract.

Conbon

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @Conbon: Kill yourself.

TheHonJudgeSmails

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @moff: Actually, she's Heifer. From Rocco's Modern Life. So there.

Conbon

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @moff: Zing!

DorothyMantooth

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @moff: That's better.

TheHonJudgeSmails

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> This guy was on Colbert or TDS a while ago, and I could swear he was talking like they don't charge their debtors interest.

DorothyMantooth

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @Conbon: Your mom's a heifer.

Moff

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @TheHonJudgeSmails: Hey, just yesterday I stepped on and crushed the first robin of spring to make up for it.

Moff

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @moff:

Seconded. Heifer rocks.

And you can give pigs and goats in the name of people whose stones you want to bust.

Or so I've heard.

Smitros

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @moff: Bunnies are heifers?

Conbon

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> Also - oxygen gives you cancer.

VirusWithShoes

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @moff: Aw that's so cute!

You fucking sap.

TheHonJudgeSmails

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @lawyergay: Fucking communist. It's my god-given right to horde my scorpion tomatoes!

AuntPeniston

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @Phyllis Nefler: I was for them before I was against them.

TheHonJudgeSmails

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> After all, who can question the credibility of a journalist who writes

The Bank's representatives choose not to respond to these accusations. It is impossible to obtain an interview with Mohammed Yunus, and the Grameen Bank headquarters are off-limits for journalists who are too curious.

La Cieca

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @lawyergay: You can do that!

[www.heifer.org]

We donated three bunnies in my father-in-law-to-be's name for his Christmas present. And now they're probably, like, forty bunnies!

Moff

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @TheHonJudgeSmails: I'll vote for you, but first I need to know where you stand on the issues. Flip-flops: for or against?

Phyllis Nefler

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @TheHonJudgeSmails: golf courses and cemeteries... biggest wastes of prime real estate.

jackvinyl

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @TheHonJudgeSmails: Though the caddies would probably prefer Lacy Underall, instead.

BadUncle

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> Alexandre de Lesseps, the husband of "The Real Housewives of NYC"'s LuAnn de Lesseps, has been running these for years.

dweeb

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> @lawyergay: My Bushwood Caddy Scholarship does this every year, on a much smaller scale.

TheHonJudgeSmails

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> Don't worry--karma already struck back: someone's davendring the banhart out of her!

naboo

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> look at me i'm selling payless shoes but labeling them vegan so i'm selling them at a 7 trillion percent mark up! look at me i'm loan sharking poor people! look at me i charity fucked moby! look at me i went to harvard because i am famous!

^^^ my natalie portman impression

allyzay

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> This always struck me as just a weird and bad idea. Better: Instead of loaning a mind-boggling poor person the money to buy a life-sustaining and life-changing goat, cow, or bag of genetically modified seed corn, give it to them!

lawyergay

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> Give a man some crack he'll be high for 20 mintues. Teach a man how to make crack and give him a small loan to finance his operation and he'll be dead within a month.

kathotdog

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> Eat the poor? Hmmm, you're onto something. I am adding this to my Smails 2012 platform.

TheHonJudgeSmails

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> I hate her.

rantersparadise

]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood's Favorite Anti-Poverty Crusade Actually Making People Poorer]]> i hate natalie portman so, so, so, so much.

allyzay

]]>