Muhammad Yunus and the Financial Crisis: The Human Element

It may seem an odd combination to interview both Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus and former junk bond trader Michael Milken on the same Charlie Rose show, to talk about the financial crisis, but that is exactly what happened... what is said makes sense... watch here:

http://thecriticalthinker.wordpress.com/2008/10/31/michael-milken-and-muhammad-yunus-on-the-credit-crisis/

Prof. Yunus discusses microcredit and Social Business. Milken reflects back on his days of leveraging, which now seem extremely conservative compared to what has been going on over the past decade. Milken also says that what made the US different than other countries in the past was democracy and education. Now the US has fallen behind in education. We need to look at other countries now for examples on how to move forward and educate our children.

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Milken's experience "at the top" and Yunus' experience "at the bottom" come together to look at how the future of the economy, and how to empower individuals. Milken says something very interesting, which is that even if we have lost capital, but still have our health and knowledge, we can still create and rebuild the economy, and add with that Yunus' desire to provide loans to all who desire to create real businesses and a real economy which factors in the human element, we can still be optimistic about out future. In fact, perhaps the silver lining in this crisis is that we will start focusing on the human part of how we will build a more sustainable future.

Other sites where Prof. Yunus addresses the Financial Crisis:
From Business Week:
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/oct2008/id20081013_307979.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily

Agence France Press in English
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5imEfzp22LDwktarjicl1CN0XUDtw

German online version of der Spiegel in English
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,583366,00.html