The Indian subcontinent was the first place where modern microfinance, at the time called “micro credit,” really became a phenomenon. While small scale lending has been going on for centuries, it was in the 1970s that Muhammad Yunus began to put together ideas which eventually led to the Grameen Bank being established in Bangladesh. The Bank, which provided small loans to extremely poor group borrowers, has been marked out by its success (leading eventually to it being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, and by the fact that the vast majority of its borrowers (who are also its shareholders) are women.

When India’s finance minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, announced his budget on the last day of February, one particular item stood out for those familiar with microcredit; that was the nearly $185 million appropriated to establish a small public bank for the poor run by and for women.

India already has several institutions which perform a similar task to the one described by Chidambaram. The Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank is a rural cooperative bank specializing in microfinance loans to women. Others, such as the MahilaSewa (Self-employed Women’s Association) Cooperative bank, perform similar functions. Some have argued that such co-op banks are more effective than public banks in performing such a role (lending to women, alleviating extreme poverty.)

Microfinance enterprises can also potentially be very profitable undertakings as excess urban capital is redirected to credit starved rural areas. Although traditional bankers who have become accustomed to talking millions or billions might doubt the impact a few hundred dollars can have, but the “bottom billion” effect makes this area one with huge potential.

For really small scale microcredit to work, some of the traditional tools of finance, such as credit history checks and requirements for collateral, have to be discarded. This naturally makes many bankers weary, and yet there are cases such as those highlighted above where genuine benefits can be achieved without the system collapsing into “charity disguised as something else.” Problems with credit history for example, (in the case of Grameen Bank), were dealt with by the institution adopting a “group lending” approach, capitalizing on the close sense of community in small rural villages.

Mohamed A. El-Erian writes suggestively about the impact of technological innovation on finance.  Noting that journalism, the media and entertainment have been revolutionized by technology, he looks at some areas that may be dramatically changed by technology.

Bitcoins have “attracted attention from specialists, regulators, and, slowly but surely, the public. But the crypto-currency phenomenon is far from the only example, and it is certainly not the most consequential one. Its impact, both actual and potential, is relatively limited when compared to ongoing attempts to enhance and democratize lending, borrowing, investing, and payments and settlements.”

El-Erian points to technology entrepreneurs who understand the power of online/social media innovation to disrupt components of traditional finance, and are now leading efforts that include behavioral scientists and finance experts.

Think:  Internet driven lending clubs,  peer-to-peer initiatives in consuer financial services, digital wallets and mobile transfers.

Cubed is Nikil Saval’s detailed cultural history of how the office grew to become the definitive 20th century workplace, Saval presents a description of the stylish office worker, courtesy of Walt Whitman circa 1856.* At that time, nonmanual labor accounted for a minority of jobs in the country, and those who did spend their days in an office were often the source of derision. Whitman, for one, described office workers as “a slender and round-shouldered generation, of minute leg, chalky face, and hollow chest … trig and prim in great glow of shiny boots, clean shirts—sometimes, just now, of extraordinary patterns, as if overrun with bugs!—tight pantaloons, straps, which seem coming little into fashion again, startling cravats, and hair all soaked and ‘slickery’ with sickening oils.”

To start, Saval explains, many offices took a cue from the factory and lined desks up in long rows. Then, in the early 20th century, two innovations emerged that would get recycled and reinterpreted in various ways over the next century. The first arrived courtesy of Frederick Taylor, a consultant and theorist who made it his goal to remove all inefficiencies from the office and argued for an extreme division of labor to replace what was the more fluid work style of the old clerks, who worked in small offices of four or five people and were responsible for a wide variety of tasks. Taylor created the position of the manager. As Saval writes:

By separating knowledge from the basic work process … the ideology of Taylorism all but ensured a workplace divided against itself, both in space and in practice, with a group of managers controlling how work was done and their workers merely performing that work.

Even as some offices today, particularly those in the tech industry, have attempted to move toward nonhierarchical models that recognize the benefit of idle, creative time, most still employ a version of this hierarchical, efficiency-driven system.

An office with 130 workers has one long desk for everyone.  Only the boss’s section is messy.

The association of micro Italian COMITAS in Salerno created the ” ATM Anti-Crisis ” to  provide assistance to small entrepreneurs and artisans in trouble.  Times are tough in Italy.  Now a day passes without an entrepreneur, crushed by the economic crisis, taking his life.  Over the past four years in Italy for economic causes suicides increased by 30%. This real emergency is addressed by providing useful tools tools to craftsmen and owners of small businesses.

Through the ” ATM Anti-crisis ” a staff of lawyers , accountants and experts give assistance to entrepreneurs in Salerno on several fronts : tax collection folders , with Treasury debt , late payments by the PA , banks, and usurious interest rates.  All situations where the business owners are harassed or when their rights are violated are now reported in a criminal court.

” Small business owners are left on their own – says the president of Comitas , Francis Drums.   With this ATM Anticrisi we not only offer practical help, but also a support community.

Monkeys and humans save at the same rate.  I.e., they don’t.  So it has been suggested that enrollment in companies’ 401K plans be automatic.  (You can elect out).

Approximately 30 percent of eligible workers do not participate in their employer’s 401(k)-type plan. Studies suggest that automatic enrollment plans could reduce this rate to less than 15 percent, significantly increasing retirement savings. Whether you already have a 401(k) plan or are considering starting one, automatic enrollment 401(k) plans offer many advantages.

An automatic enrollment 401(k) plan:

• Helps attract and keep talented employees.
• Increases plan participation among both rank-and-file employees and owners/managers.
• Allows for salary deferrals into certain plan investments if employees do not select their own investments.
• Simplifies selection of investments appropriate for long-term retirement savings for participants.
• Helps employees begin saving for their future.
• Offers significant tax advantages (including deduction of employer contributions and deferred taxation on contributions and earnings until distribution).                  

Lily Leung reports that Vietnamese-American business women blend old tradition and new ways.  

Karen Firestone reports:

Financial institutions portray women today as competent and self-confident, and often feature attractive, middle-aged advisors talking to couples in which the woman is similarly well dressed and clearly attentive. According to Dr. Emma Firestone, who has studied the audience perception and response to images and words in media and entertainment, from a cognitive perspective, “It makes sense for advertisers to present women as strong, well-educated consumers. This is appealing to women who see an attractive self-image reflected back at them, and to men, who are flattered by the idea that smart, self-possessed, and financially secure women are their own life partners.” Men are much more likely today, than decades ago, to be comfortable with and appreciate their spouses as full partners in their own financial decision-making – at the same time, imagery of supportive female financial advisors plays into comforting stereotypes of the woman-as-helpmeet, perhaps humanizing an industry consumers view as confusing or even threatening.

However, there is a trapdoor in this picture. The rise in strong feminine images in financial advertising also coincides with some very negative portrayals of men in the industry: the testosterone-driven traders and gamblers who led us over the financial cliff in 2008.  As Christine Lagarde, Director of the International Monetary Fund stated only partly in jest, if the firm had been called “Lehman Sisters” there might not have been the same resulting devastation to world economies. Extensive research suggests that if financial firms had fewer men, those firms would have taken on less risk. Both headlines and Hollywood have also focused on the antics of a few particularly macho financial executives.  It may be that today’s financial firms are trying to portray a “feminized” face to distance themselves from stereotypes like these.

The University of Pennsylvania reports:  Pakistani girls and villagers to take one step forward from poor living conditions into better lives through different development initiatives.  Meher Rehman, University of Pennsylvania senior, is building on a mission she began while still in high school: working to empower women in developing parts of the world through micro-finance projects.

As a young Muslim, Pakistani woman, I hope to be a strong voice for reform in women’s rights in the Middle East and South Asia,” Rehman, who was born in Pakistan and is from Grand Rapids, Mich., told Penn News.  Rehman, who is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in international relations at Penn, has been involved in work to help vulnerable populations in Pakistan and in Saudi Arabia. She says issues of social and economic empowerment of women can be contentious in both countries.  “For me, growing up in these two places, it was always clear how much potential there was for change through women. My friends, their mothers and sisters, all the women I knew had ideas and opinions on what should change,” she says.  As a high school student in Michigan, Rehman founded a non-profit organization to facilitate development projects in rural Pakistan. The organization’s name, One Step Forward, enables Pakistani girls and villagers to take one step forward from poor living conditions into better lives through different development initiatives.

In one program, young women from rural areas in Pakistan receive vocational training at a local center. They learn to sew, bead and make handcrafted pieces that they sell to earn money for themselves and their families. Rehman helped raise thousands of dollars for the women though U.S. sales of their handmade bookmarks.

In the summer of her sophomore year, Rehman worked in an internship in Mumbai, at Dasra, one of India’s leading strategic philanthropic foundations. Rehman worked on projects to addresses sanitation problems in the slums of the city.

The following summer, she helped launch a series of micro-health insurance packages for women, their children and the elderly, as an intern with a leading micro-finance institution in Pakistan.

On campus Rehman has served as co-president of Penn International Business Volunteers, a student-run group that organizes and implements projects for students to consult with non-governmental organizations in developing countries.