According to Time magazine's article http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1729524-7,00.html Barack Obama's mother was very involved in the microfinance world. She worked with the Bank Rakyat Indonesia in the late 1980's. With a mom like this and Barack's community development work in the past, you would think that he would have great plans for development. However, according to this NYTimes article http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/hillary-clinton-on-deve..., which discusses Hillary Clinton's recent speech on development, the Obama administration hasn't been that engaged in poverty issues.
I hope that in the future the administration will begin to take a deeper interest as Obama's presidency continues to evolve. With a mother in microfinance hopefully he will support the cause and help microfinance to grow domestically and internationally.
Does anyone know any more about Obama's thoughts on microfinance or any plans for development that were discussed in his campaign?
I agree with you on wanting the Obama administration to get more involved with microfinance. Maybe after this economic crisis as calmed down a bit more his attention will land on development? I hope so.
Also, is there no way to categorize threads within a discussion group? I know of other online forums that can do that (my school's specifically). That would help a lot, as far as keeping track of the different themes people are exploring...
Can any…
Clearly, the problem is the lack of lenders who will charge "fair" rates for the lending of capital temporarily and/or pay her the true value of her product. What I find difficult about this question is deciding what are fair lending rates and produ…