New America events

What goes up, as the saying goes, must come down, and for all the splash that the microcredit movement has made in the past decade, it seems that the belief that small loans will provide a pathway out of poverty is revealing some fissures.

A recent Times of London article (World poverty guru "fails" to spread wealth) brought attention to the questions surrounding the movement to which Muhammad Yunus helped to bring awareness.  The article cited a recent study conducted by Dean Karlan and Jonathan Zinman in the Philippines, where they discovered that microcredit recipients did not fare better than those not receiving loans.

That's not to say that the advent of microlending has not been a vital and necessary innovation.  But it isn't a panacea, and more voices have arisen to ask: what about providing the poor the financial services to which they so often lack access; most notably, a safe place to deposit and save their money?

James Lockhart, Director and Chairman of the Oversight Board at the Federal Housing Finance Agency (the entity overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) joined Ellen Seidman to discuss the conservatorship of Fannie and Freddie. The interview followed an event, "Foreclosures: What are Fannie and Freddie Doing to Stem the Tide?" on November 13.