By Aaron Barbour
Today the Guardian carries a great column from our friend, Faisel Rahman at Fair Finance (which we helped establish), about the lack of affordable and accessible credit for people and businesses in poor communities, and how the USA’s Community Reinvestment Act from 1977 has been so effective by investing (profitably by banks) nearly $5tn (£3.45tn) into poor communities via the CRA.
Can the UK government finally wake up and smell the CRA? Faisel quotes Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, perfectly: “The question is not ‘Are people credit-worthy?’, but ‘Are banks people-worthy?”
This is even more relevant in today’s economic climate.
