Keen On

The seductive promise of microfinance might have conveniently died in the Western media, but Muhammad Yunis’ alluring economic idea has actually wreaked unintentional havoc around the world. Mara Kardas-Nelson’s important new book, We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky, reveals the damage done by microfinance loans in developing world countries like Sierra Leone and Bangladesh because their predatory interest rates. As too often with supposedly democratizing “innovations” like microfinance or cryptocurrency, Kardas-Nelson reminds us, it’s poor people, particularly women, who ultimately get saddled with the techno-utopian bill. Mara Kardas-Nelson is an independent journalist focusing on international development and inequality. Her award-winning work has been supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation, Investigative Editors and Reporters, the Richard J. Margolis Award and others and has appeared in the New York Times, the Nation, the Guardian, on NPR, and elsewhere. Mara has also spent years working