"To have a truly major impact, though, microcredit needs to move out of the realm of the social worker and into the halls of finance. "There's been a realization that the only way to make this work is to do it according to business and financial incentives," says Elizabeth Littlefield, CEO of the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, the microfinance think tank housed in the World Bank."

What a terrific idea. Take a bunch of small programs that work and merge them into one big program run by the people who built the dysfunctional system we have now.

If World Bank wants to start a microlending program, great. Let them run it according to "business and financial incentives," which means "profit," just in case that wasn't obvious. If they think the key to microlending is earning more millions for millionaires, terrific. Go for it, World Bank. I'll continue to give my contributions to grassroots efforts that operate on a break-even principle.

Sub prime lending is quite all right and successful as long as the lender continues to hold the note...once he/she is incentivized to sell it, the horse is out the door, so to speak. The Wall Street geniuses created a system where the "next fool" took the risk while they received the reward...we've now learned that the "ultimate fool" is the tax-payer...the ordinary citizens who believed the myth of unfettered capitalism and bought the Reagan movie star script hook line and sinker...it was so pervasive thru time that we lowered our standards as we went along and found ourselves with a mediocre President whose sole platform was "no taxes" in an "ownership society"...now we OWN bad debt and our children and grandchildren are given a BIRTH TAX of immense proportions...banks want to be free to go their liquid way and the mythmakers will be harping about undue regulation...what a deal!