Wall Street Journal has been scooping FC from the get-go with a Bill Gates feature the day (Jan 24) of his World Economic Forum launch of creative capitalism, and a weekend splash on Yunus :

[Subprime Lender]
pic by Ismael Roldan

Mr. Yunus, who cheerfully refers to his business as "sub sub sub subprime," seems unfazed by the U.S. subprime mortgage collapse and the various tightenings of credit that followed in its wake. "If subprime cases are risky, Grameen cases are extremely risky," he says. "Because not only are we poorest, [borrowers] don't have collateral, they don't have guarantees, they don't have lawyers, nothing. How risky can you get? Still, our money comes back." Grameen has claimed that over 98% of their debts are repaid.

I mention that Mr. Yunus's way of doing business seems like an "old-fashioned" notion of credit, which a few centuries back was apparently closer to the Latin credere (to believe or trust). To have "credit" in a community, for example, meant that you could be trusted to pay back your debts.

"I use to say this in my speeches, in the early days," he responds. "I said: look at the world, how funny it is. They took the word credit which means trust, and built a whole edifice of credit institutions, refined, very sophisticated, entirely based on distrust." At Grameen, he says, "we went back to the original meaning of credit."

Mr. Yunus would argue that in making credit more easily accessible, he is helping guarantee a fundamental human right. "There are certain items that are listed as human rights: right to food, right to shelter, right to work, right to health . . . but who are going to implement those human rights?"

Some might say that government is responsible. But "that doesn't mean that government has to bring a platter full of food every morning to feed you, that's not what the government could do. Government could not bring health care to every single citizen or work opportunity for every single citizen."

Out of all the rights that he listed, Mr. Yunus says he would put credit as No. 1. "If you agree that each case of receiving microcredit is a creation of self-employment, then my argument is self-employment creates income," he explains. "Income is the thing which brings food. Income is the thing which creates the possibility of shelter, home. And income is the best medicine."

From WSJ Article:

Muhammad Yunus Subprime Lender; By EMILY PARKER,March 1, 2008; Page A9,Queens, N.Y.