Social Business and the Future of Capitalism
by Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize 2006
256 pages, read over last weekend.
Bringing the Economy back at the service of Society.
This book made it's way in my "to read" pile just 2 months ago, after picking it up at the airport when flying back from a business trip. The pile's 4 feet height shows how much I'm behind in my reading, roughly 6 months. Eventually, the sudden acceleration of detrioration of the US economy made me dig it out from the bottom.
Considering the little interest the US gov and US finance has for the US economy other than gnawing it's bones clean, the people are still going to need a financial system that will cater their needs, even the poorest if they still want to eat, as more and more are excluded from the economy and denied access to the most basic commodities.
One of the principles of the system the author describes is that anyone, the poor, beggars, is credit worthy by virtue of being alive.
A second principle is that a loan's interest shall never exceed the amount of the loan itself over the duration of the loan, whatever the amount of time until the final repayment.
A third principle, is measuring an investment bank's performance not through the total amount of loans given out, but through the outcome of it's debtors, who directly support the local economy by their ability of participating to it.
A fourth principle is there shall be no penalties for defaulters, and an obligation for creditors to not only freeze interests and suspend billing, but to offer the counselling, and whatever opportunities adapted to the debtor's situation, including employment or servicing out, to help him get back on the track of payment.
A very interesting chapter describes how, today, the education of women is the best single investment a society can make.
There are many, many other brillant, not necessarily original, ideas laid down in this book, and one that I found particularly exciting: an independent stock exchange of Social Businesses, governed by a social charter, and which performance is not measured only by a company's capital, revenue and earnings, but also by it's social and environmental impact.
Do yourself a favor, buy this book and be among the first to pick up whatever will be left of the US economy, for the right purpose.