About the Program
Nobel Peace Prize recipient Muhammad Yunus talks about using micro-credit to help the poor around the world - including in the U.S. - improve their lives. Mr. Yunus spoke at an event held at George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium.
About the Author
Muhammad Yunus is the founder and managing director of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. Mr. Yunus is the author of "Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty." For more, visit: muhammadyunus.org. Competition and profit maximization do not describe human nature; they can reduce, distort and destroy human nature.

"You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake" - Jeanette Rankin on eve of WWI
"Every war has two losers"
William Stafford

On Friday, Jan 23rd, at about 9:00 pm, 4 Baltimore animal rights activists were arrested while legally and peacefully protesting the sale of foie gras at Cork's restaurant, located in the Federal Hill area. Officers told activists that they could not protest in front of the restaurant and had to leave or be arrested.

"..He's back and in denial in a March 11 Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined: "The Fed Didn't Cause the Housing Bubble." He lied, the way he did throughout his career and for 18.5 years as Fed chairman. How else could he have kept the job..
Across the board, his Fed tenure outraged William Greider enough to call him one of "the most duplicitous figures (ever) in modern American government" who used his position to "corrupt the political dialogue" to sell snake oil to Congress and the public and be a willing co-conspirator in the theft of trillions going back to the early 1980s before his Fed days. He championed derivatives, securitization, and deregulation. He believed unfettered markets work best so let them and told a congressional committee in the mid-1990: "Risks in financial markets, including derivative markets, are being regulated by private parties. There is nothing involved in federal regulation per se which makes it superior to market regulation." In other words, let capital operate freely, plunder at will, and have no regulatory restraints regardless of the harm caused.."

Output per worker, efficiency or productivity, increased 25% from 1923-1930 while wages only increased 4%. The first problem today is that people can't afford what whey produce. The second problem is that we've been consuming the planet.

Richard Wolff teaches economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. "From 1820 to the 1970s, higher productivity led to higher wages. In the last 30 years, there was an explosion of profit along with stagnant wages.."

Susan George, author of 14 books including "The Debt Boomerang," is honorary president of Attac (France). In this address from Nov 3, 2008, she explains how the financial crisis can be used to tackle other crises.

What the Europeans really think about America's regulatory blunders
On a popular talk show, Oscar lafontaine made this provocative comparison: "To put a former Goldman Sachs chairman in charge of the US Treasury (and the US rescue operation to combat the financial crisis) is like putting a drug baron in office to fight the war on drugs."