There are indeed many financial issues that are up for long overdue reviews

Sir Christopher Caldwell in “Time for some morality trades” December 20, discusses whether the whole financial system should be up for a moral review. If so may I suggest we start by looking into the whole concept of placing borrowers in special high-interest rates corrals, with the help of tools that are not overly transparent, and then pushing the corralled into an impoverishing anticipation of consumption, all in order to make a profit from financial intermediation. From a societal point of view, without even discussing morality, driving an unnecessary wedge between people does not seem the smartest thing to do.

By coincidence in the same issue Dr. Milford Bateman in “Microfinance’s ‘iron law’ – local economies reduced to poverty” suggest that those lending money for marginal and most often informal entrepreneurial activities are digging the poor deeper in the hole they’re in, since those resources could have been used to finance some much better development ladders. Indeed this possibility and that for the development community must sound as a real shocker, also qualifies the microfinance sector for an urgent moral and practical review.