Microcredit finds a new sponsor: LDS Newsline has posted a classic speech by President Hinckley to the National Press Club back in 2000. On the whole it's fairly general, but the following interesting paragraph jumped out at me as fairly trendy for the financially conservative, debt-abhorring Church. Microcredit, viable small-scale or cooperative credit schemes significant to many tightly networked ethnic communities, were an institution virtually ignored by financial theorists and economists until about twenty years ago. (Not surprising for economics, which often manages to ignore institutions entirely.) Here's the interesting paragraph:
We are already engaged in micro-credit undertakings, whereby small amounts are loaned to those for whom a hundred or two or three hundred dollars can spell an actual change in their future. When given such credit these people become entrepreneurs, taking pride in what they are doing and lifting themselves out of the bondage that has shackled their forebears for generations. From a bread shop in Ghana to a woodworking business in Honduras, we are making it possible for people to learn skills they never dreamed of acquiring and to raise their standard of living to a level of which they previously had little hope.
11:45:47 PM 
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