Lessons from the Poor: The Power of Entrepreneurship

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Comment by chris macrae on November 12, 2008 at 1:27pm

To David J. Theroux, Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer, The Independent Institute

From Chris Macrae

Dear Mr Theroux

On Monday I talked to Roy Carlisle whom I had been referred to by Jo Kwong. I was asking whether it would be possible to leave a free dvd on audience’s chairs at your Thursday afternoon event. The dvd is an exclusive made with Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus and his 10 leading poverty entrepreneurs in Dhaka including all 4 original co-founders of Microcredit in 1976. I am not aware of any resource that connects all their 34 years of entrepreneurship including the 25000 people who work at Grameen and the 100000 that President Clinton has identified as being primarily responsible for Bangladesh’s thriving rural and mobile economies. Roy said I should leave a dvd for you on Wednesday night and I will bring a box just in case you are happy with distribution.

Further background

My father, Norman Macrae, worked at The Economist for 40 years and was a reviewer of the Atlas Book Prize. In 1984, dad & my future history to 2024 forecast that the 00s would be the riskiest decade; that ending poverty would be the generational challenge that reduced risk and advanced sustainability; that this would need a Nobel Laureate to inspire the worldwide generation to hunt out 30000 replicable community rising projects. Having read Dr Yunus’ book (2008: Creating a World without Poverty - Social Business, Future of Capitalism) on the system designs that Dr Yunus and Grameen Bank have used to collaboratively end poverty, my father commends Dr Yunus as the the number 1 entrepreneur of the free market of ending poverty.

Through 2009, we aim primarily to connect 10000 university students and alumni of Yunus, and Obama through hosting dvd parties with the 10000 dvds we have printed for free distribution across collaboration networks with a microeconomics lens. As we only just receive the dvds a fortnight ago, documentation on potential uses is still in progress. Rough maps of the 7 microsummits that 68 year old Dr Yunus believes are essential to empower by 2015 to achieve millennium goals are indicated.


Sincerely, Chris Macrae
Rockville, Maryland, 12 November , 2008
301 881 1655
chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk
http://www.normanmacrae.com http://yunus10000.com

Comment by chris macrae on November 25, 2008 at 7:05am

the lighthouse blog makes for quite uneasy reading , and perhaps that what we need to raise the debate as to how to get out of the global financial mess that false (and low-trust) macroeconomics has compounded onto all of us

In an article in the December 2008 issue of GlobeAsia, economist Steve Hanke quotes Senior Fellow Robert Higgs and references Dr. Higgs’s monumental Independent Institute book, Depression, War and Cold War, to show how federal government policies created, deepened and prolonged the Great Depression, killing off the chances for recovery until after World War II.

The purveyors of Great Depression myths—such as this year’s Nobel laureate in economics Paul Krugman—assert that the fiscal stimulus which accompanied World War II rescued the economy from the Great Depression. In fact, the Great Depression was followed by a spontaneous recovery, with the unemployment rate falling from 24.7% in 1933 to 14.2% in 1937. This recovery was interrupted by a sharp slump in 1938-1939. It was concentrated in the manufacturing sector and was associated with a decline in gross private domestic investment. Even though a spontaneous recovery occurred before World War II, it is important to stress that scholarship by Robert Higgs, and other economic historians, shows that—contrary to legend—the New Deal held down the spontaneous recovery and contributed to the 1938-1939 slump. Indeed, Higgs’ evidence demonstrates that investment was depressed by New Deal initiatives because of regime uncertainty—‘a pervasive uncertainty among investors about the security of their property rights in their capital and prospective returns.’ (Robert Higgs, Depression, War and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 5). In short, investors were afraid to commit funds to new projects because they didn’t know what President Roosevelt and the New Dealers will do next.

Hanke further correctly notes the following regarding the current, bi-partisan bailout scheme:

This brings us to the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). This $700 billion bailout program is, among other things, a bureaucratic nightmare that is as confused as it is confusing. Add to that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s major shifts in the TARP’s direction, as well as the circus on Capitol Hill, and we have all the ingredients for a royal case of regime uncertainty. It shouldn’t be surprising, therefore, that each time Secretary Paulson makes a pronouncement or the Congress performs another act, the stock market takes a dive.

 

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