Already there are media debates circulating that the funds rate should *not* be cut, in order to force institutions take more responsibility in cleaning up their loan risk exposures. I’m not a finance person; but I would be willing to sit on a freeze of consumer interest rates if it meant that financial institutions would stop their reckless gambling with OUR money.

I don’t care that people cannot now buy a new or their first home; they should be forced to save more money as down-payment, not get greater access to debt capital. It’s called ‘renting’ – many of us have done, so should they.

Chikwe, indeed! cool thing is tech can help us catch up a bit, we need to create more African content that is portable and can compete with our short attention spans (oh i meant – my short attention span)I am thinking more podcasts, its been really convenient watching the TED Global talks on my IPOD, and listening to Caribbean free radio podcast from Georgia popplewell. http://www.caribbeanfreeradio.com/blog/index.php?cat=4
Seems like i will need to do a post on Africa related podcasts soon!

The challenge for many of our younger ones…and ourselves to an extent is how to fit it all in in an era of TV, games, email, facebook, blogs etc etc!

…annoyingly…I hardly get past a few pages a day of the book by my bed…cause by the time I am trough with all the other stuff. But the struggle continues….

Life will be so empty without African arts, books and music

Excuse me a moment… {cough}{cough}bullshit{cough}

I heard that same piece when it was broadcast. I also heard, within that same piece, or a following piece also on NPR, about the condescending outlook that Spanish have of immigrants. Not outright prejudice or discrimination (e.g. masked as legal immigration legislation) — which I believe has way more influence on why South Americans would travel all the way to Europe to look for better economic opportunites {but then again, I’m not an Expert} — but the typical kind of initial tensions that occur when immigrants move into established communites.

As to real heart of the report, I do believe banks will wake-up and see that there’s some long-tail profitability to pursuing remittance service. However…do we really want these methods under official scrunity, worse under governmental regulations? These methods work because they are under the radar, and that they are not significantly draining capital out of the income-generating economy. Consider if a country started regulating remittance services, under the guise of preventing funding terrorism?

As to the credit products, not gonna happen now, not for a while at least, given the sub-prime fiasco.