 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
The Soon Coming Judgment Of God Upon America and How To Escape It 140
inform their staff: “We are in the business of reducing people's misery, not increasing it. If we
are not capable of doing that, we should close down our shop and find something else to do for a
living.”
459
Dr. Yunus says, “At Grameen, we follow the principle that the borrower knows best....
We encourage our borrowers to make their own decisions.... But it is quite different with the
World Bank. They don't just give you money. They give you all the ideas, expertise and
everything else. Your job is to follow the yellow lines, the green lines, the red lines, read the
instructions at each stop and follow them. The World Bank is eager to assume all the
responsibilities. They don't want to leave any responsibility for the borrower, except the
responsibility for the failure of the project.
The World Bank approaches its borrowers through a string of powerful missions. The
missions are so plentiful that at no point are you very far away from the next World Bank
mission. Despite all the arrogance of expertise, supervision and money, the projects don't always
work out. Yet the borrowers are blamed for these failures. Is this fair?”
460
Sophia Khatoon, a self-employed 22-year old bamboo furniture maker is typical of the
types of clients Grameen helps. Sophia was working very hard 7-days a week and was barely
getting by. She was dependent on loans for materials. The only one willing to loan her the money
required that she sell her furniture to him. Sophia was also paying exorbitant interest charges
which kept her from making a fair profit on her work. Dr. Yunus calculated the interest to be
10% per day or roughly 3,000% per year.
Sophia only borrowed 50 taka (a few dollars), from Grameen but it changed her life. In a
few months she was independent of her “loan shark.” She was able to repay her loan and her
income had increased by 700%. Many skilled and exploited workers around the world are in the
same position as Sophia. They live in extreme poverty while others create extreme wealth from
their labor. Like Sophia, many can be set free for very little money and at almost no risk.
Now a vision has been embraced to replicate Grameen's success by setting up
independent banks modeled on Grameen throughout the third world, everywhere there are poor.
“To this end, Grameen Trust was set up to provide the seed capital, training, technical assistance
and experience-sharing to economists and bankers of other countries wanting to emulate
Grameen Bank's system.” By 1997 there had been 168 such banks established in 44 countries.
461
The current goal is to see that 10 million poor benefit by the replication of the program by
2005.
462
Foreign Aid For the Enemy
The recent wars with Afghanistan and Iraq are two excellent examples of the results of
US foreign aid. Not only did US aid prop up evil oppressive governments with horrible
consequences to the people of those nations but also turned the people of those nations against
us.
The US provided financial aid to the Islamic holy warriors known as the Mujahideen.
This was a radical religious group that practiced the most radical and oppressive form of Islam
known as Wahhabi. The US support of the Mujahideen precipitated a war with Russia as the US
officials had anticipated. During the war the US provided $6 billion in military aid. This aid
 |