Muhammad Yunus

Bangladesh's "banker to the poor" says the world has missed a golden opportunity to help the neediest people on the planet with a redesign of the financial system in the wake of the global economic crisis. Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, who along with his Grameen Bank won the peace prize in 2006 for his work in Bangladesh, said leaving the world's banking system in more or less the same state would not help the poor. "This was the greatest opportunity we ever had to redesign the financial system globally and totally," the 69-year-old told AFP. "But now we've gone back to the same old ... Read Full Story

The global financial crisis has highlighted a curious success story: A bank that doles out loans to some of the world's poorest, least-creditworthy people continues to have a payback rate of nearly 100 percent. Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, known as the "banker to the poor," quips that the Grameen Bank he founded owes its success to "sub-sub-subprime borrowers" who also own nearly all the bank's equity. When Yunus approached traditional banks over 30 years ago about lending to the poor in Bangladesh to start small businesses, he was told it could not be done. But since 1983, the bank has lent more ... Read Full Story

President Barack Obama will next month award the highest US civilian honor to 16 "agents of change" including Desmond Tutu, Stephen Hawking and Muhammad Yunus, the White House said Thursday. Obama will present the Presidential Medal of Freedom on August 12 to Tutu, a South African anti-apartheid veteran, British physicist Hawking and Yunus, a Bangladeshi micro-financier who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. Other figures tapped to receive the nation's highest civilian honor included six women from sport, entertainment, science and government; a Native American war chief, a civil rights leader, an African-American actor, two US lawmakers and a doctor. Harvey Milk, the ... Read Full Story

The global economic crisis can be an opportunity for positive social change, Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus said Saturday during a speech honoring former South African President Nelson Mandela. Yunus, who pioneered a micro-financing system for the poor, said the financial meltdown has shown that traditional ways of doing business have not worked. "This economic crisis suddenly awakens us to the fact that this system is not working. When the system is not working that is the best time to undo it and redo it in a new way," he said. "The financial crisis on top of the food crisis, the energy crisis, ... Read Full Story

From Publishers Weekly Economics professor Yunus claims he originally became involved in the poverty issue not as a policy-maker, scholar, or researcher, but because poverty was all around me. With these words he stopped teaching elegant theories and began lending small amounts of money, $40 or less, without collateral, to the poorest women in the world. Thirty-three years later, the Grameen Bank has helped seven million people live better lives building businesses to serve the poor. The bank is solidly profitable, with a 98.6% repayment rate. It inspired the micro-credit movement, which has helped 100 million of the poorest people in the world escape ... Read Full Story