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["Toni Hawryluk" <tonihawr AT msn.com>]

> Tvoivozhd---compassion is a poor engine for reform---it quickly burns out and relapses to the status quo.  Self interest is more reliable.  If the poor were perceived as a potential, but undeveloped market, you would have the business class clamoring to exploit a new opportunity.  However our own poor within our own borders are perceived as worthless, indolent creatures upon which it is useless to expend money except for maintenance via soup kitchens and to some extent, temporary shelters.  Grameen banks have proven this concept to be faulty, but we do not have
Grameen banks here or in poor Arab sections of rich Arab nations.

 

When I read the "story" of the original Grameen

bank (this was some years ago) I was struck by

two things :

 

first - the piddley (from a current industrialized

population viewpoint) $.amounts which, lent to the

"right" person, produced *such* results, and

 

second - that the "right" people were *all* women.

Toni