Tuesday, December 12, 2006

NOBEL CommonDreams: "The Bangladeshi banker Muhammad Yunus, who invented the practice of making small, unsecured loans to the poor, warned today that the globalized economy was becoming a dangerous 'free-for-all highway'. 'Its lanes will be taken over by the giant trucks from powerful economies,' Dr. Yunus said during a lavish ceremony at which he was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. 'Bangladeshi rickshaws will be thrown off the highway.' While international companies motivated by profit may be crucial in addressing global poverty, he said, nations must also cultivate grassroots enterprises and the human impulse to do good. Challenging economic theories that he learned as a Ph.D. student at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville in the 1970s, he said glorification of the entrepreneurial spirit has led to 'one-dimensional human beings' motivated only by profit." Poverty is an artificial creation. The Nobel lecture. The ceremony. 11:58:07 AM

© Copyright 2007 Hetty Litjens.