The part on “microlending” requires a serious edit, though. As it reads it is false, and many people in poor countries can provide testimonial. This is why:

“Buy if you are forced to, but never sell. Rent from if you are forced to, but never rent to. The alternative to the totalitarianism of corporate capitalism death machine -big business- is not small business (that’s the same old thing only less of it), is NO business. Do your thing, like a bee finding nectar, and give it away with no strings attached to the colony, I mean, to the community ;-)”

What the Earth Community needs is redistribution of real wealth (social, spiritual and natural capital), not loans of phantom wealth.

To go even a step further, we have the great latest news: over many decades, Elinor Ostrom has documented how various communities manage common resources — grazing lands, forests, irrigation waters, fisheries — equitably and sustainably over the long term. The Nobel Committee’s recognition of her work effectively debunks popular theories about the so called “Tragedy of the Commons”, which hold that private property is the only effective method to prevent finite resources from being ruined or depleted.
http://www.dailygood.org/more.php?n=3926

“What we have ignored is what citizens can do and the importance of real involvement.” — Elinor Ostrom

And here is another perspective:

Compound interest grows money exponentially, similar to how cancer cells multiply. So long as we have a debt-based, interest-bearing, centralized money supply, our money will grow like cancer. By the very nature of this system, the top 10% of money holder are net recipients of the interest on money (which is built into the price of all goods and services) at the expense of bottom 90%. The function of interest on a practical level is the repeated creation of asset bubbles that must continually burst, each time consolidating wealth to a smaller fraction of top money holders. As the monetary supply grows, the frequency of asset bubbles increases until the entire system collapses because of the widespread instability it creates. In late 2005, the Federal Reserve stopped reporting M3– the total money supply– probably because the number had become so astronomically high that it was increasingly difficult– mathematically and politically– to report.

It is the very design of our monetary system that has impoverished the majority of the planet, leading to scarcity, wars, and ecological destruction. So this system of bringing the non-moneyed class back into the monetary system and extracting interest from them aka “microfinance” cannot and will not succeed in poverty alleviation.

Today we have educated our economists beyond their capacity to think. Anyone who understands compound interest understands that the subtle but persistent power of interest results in the need for infinite growth which is completely impossible with finite material resources.

Yunus (and his “microlending”) got a Nobel because he gave the rich momentary hope that our monetary system was not fatally flawed– that it was not the cause of the poverty in the world as so many had begun to feel, but that this system could be used to solve poverty. It cannot… but Nobel prizes can’t be rescinded ;-)

May all become compassionate courageous and wise.

In service + solidarity + insurgent learning,
Planetizing the Movement of the Ahimsa (R)evolution from some corner of our round borderless country…
Pancho