Thursday, November 18, 2010

investing in peloteros

"New Exotic Investment: Latin Baseball Futures"

Not actually about microfinance, but a really interesting article (to me at least) about a type of alternative investment.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

update on india's microfinance crisis

The crisis has been building for weeks, but has now reached a critical stage. Indian banks, which put up about 80 percent of the money that the companies lent to poor consumers, are increasingly worried that after surviving the global financial crisis mostly unscathed, they could now face serious losses. Indian banks have about $4 billion tied up in the industry, banking officials say.

Full story here. From the NY Times.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

microfinance in pakistan

Kristof's piece here, site for the MFI here.

can microlending save haiti?

One of the largest of Haiti’s microcredit groups, Finca Haiti, wrote off almost a third of its portfolio after many clients died in the earthquake or lost their homes and businesses. A staggering 53 percent of its borrowers were late on their payments.

Full story here. Marginal Revolution's post here.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

sks and india's microfinance crisis

On October 15th, the government of Andhra Pradesh, India's fifth-most-populous state, issued an ordinance aimed at protecting women who "are being exploited by private microfinance institutions through usurious interest rates and coercive means resulting in their impoverishment and in some cases leading to suicides." The ordinance seems designed to quash microcredit in the state, where it has grown explosively in the last five years through a process of commercialization that has brought ample capital and made millions for some investors and founders.

Read more here.

Monday, November 1, 2010

how kiva is dealing with currency risk

Professor Foote mentioned currency risk during his talk on Monday. Here is a link from Kiva's blog on how they try to deal with it.