MetaFilter posts tagged with lending

Librarians are doing it for themselves

Wordshore — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 06:17:16 -0800

What really concerns librarians; what do they discuss when they self-organise and decide for themselves? After the inaugural UK event, the second UK Librarycamp, with around 200 attendees, was recently held; reflections by Frank Norman, Carolin Schneider [1] [2], Sarah Wolfenden, Amy Faye Finnegan, Shambrarian Knights, Michelle, Jennifer Yellin, Jenni Hughes, Bookshelf Guardian, Amy Cross-Menzies and Simon Barron, and by one of the organisers. Unlike traditional library conferences, where proposals have to fit in with a theme, are submitted months in advance, and scrutinised by a panel, librarycamp follows the camp / unconference / bar format. Attendees can propose anything, right up to and including the day of the event. Sessions are strongly attendee-involved. The event is free to attend (funded by donations, crowdsourcing and sponsorship) and on a weekend, making it a personal, rather than an employer-sanctioned, event. Similar events have been held in the USA and Australia. UK librarycamp has led to several regional and local librarycamps, such as Library Camp South West and Leeds (another review) (video). Pictures of the 2012 UK librarycamp, and of the 2011 one.

Sign, drive, default, repossess and resell

sf9719 — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 19:34:56 -0800

In this little-known but fast-growing corner of the auto market, dealers command premium prices for road-worn vehicles and finance the sales at interest rates that can top 30%.

Subprime microcredit?

Forktine — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 18:10:36 -0800

India's microcredit industry may be near to collapse Microcredit has been lauded as a free-market solution to poverty, but has also come under increasing criticism in recent years for the high interest rates charged and large profits generated by many lenders. Responding to public anger over abuses in the microcredit industry — and growing reports of suicides among people unable to pay mounting debts — legislators in the state of Andhra Pradesh last month passed a stringent new law restricting how the companies can lend and collect money. Even as the new legislation was being passed, local leaders urged people to renege on their loans, and repayments on nearly $2 billion in loans in the state have virtually ceased. Lenders say that less than 10 percent of borrowers have made payments in the past couple of weeks. If the trend continues, the industry faces collapse in a state where more than a third of its borrowers live. Lenders are also having trouble making new loans in other states, because banks have slowed lending to them as fears about defaults have grown. Previously on MeFi: 1, 2, 3.

This Pony Does a Trick

cjorgensen — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:35:05 -0800

Return My Pants! There is no "About" page, or FAQ, or even site directions. You have two choices: Lend or Borrow.

bankers with a herd mentality?

Pants! — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:04:55 -0800

Sodnomdarjaa Khaltarkhuu never expected to be a metaphor for the far-reaching impacts of the financial downturn.

Libor in the LRB

geoff. — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 09:45:54 -0800

"The calculation of Libor is co-ordinated by just two people, who work in an unremarkable open-plan office in London’s Docklands .. They do this electronically, but sometimes the co-ordinators make a phone call to a bank that hasn’t sent in its estimates, and if the latter seem implausible – typos, for example, are fairly common – they’re checked, also with a quick call: ‘Hi there, is the Kiwi chap [provider of the estimates for borrowing New Zealand dollars] about? . . . Bit of a spread on the two month. Everyone else is coming in a good bit under that.’" Calculating the Libor and how London became the center of the international money markets, from the LBR.

What's up at the Fed?

landis — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:01:00 -0800

A fairly lucid description of recent actions of the Federal Reserve.

Sub-prime blues

Adamchik — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 11:05:57 -0800

For those of you who haven't been following The Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter and other purveyors of financial and real estate schadenfreude, the sub-prime mortgage market is in some serious trouble. The stock charts of the likes of New Century Financial and Fremont say a lot, although BusinessWeek and MarketWatch have been helpful in explaining. Is there really fraud in 70% of early payment defaults? I know traders are given to hyperbole, but Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch as "almost junk"?

Can I borrow a fiver? No? How about a grand?

goodnewsfortheinsane — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 13:17:16 -0800

Prosper is people-to-people money lending online. [via fosfor]

Export Credit Agencies--The Secret Engine of Globalization

faux ami — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 12:16:01 -0800

Worse Than the World Bank? Export Credit Agencies--The Secret Engine of Globalization The amount of investment that export credit agencies (ECA) support worldwide is significantly greater than the total amount of lending from the World Bank, IMF and all other multilateral institutions combined. ECA's account for the single biggest component of developing country debt and half of all new greenhouse gas-emitting industrial projects in developing countries have some sort of ECA support. Investments in places like Guatemala, South Africa, Pakistan, Chile [PDF], have had unacceptable social, environmental and economic consequences. Administered or backed by a g o v e r n m e n t, an ECA uses taxpayer money to make it cheaper and less risky for domestic corporations to export or invest overseas. ECAs privatize the profit and socialize the risk while negatively impacting indigenous cultures and enironments, all with little or no governmental oversight or public awareness of the matter. So what can we do about it? [PDF]

The problem isn't too much greed, but too much cowardly greed.

tranquileye — Thu, 02 Aug 2001 10:51:33 -0800

The problem isn't too much greed, but too much cowardly greed. "Spineless lenders, weak-kneed investors and meddling regulators intent on reducing risk pose a greater threat to the global economy than the volatile financial markets... 'The critic's image of the global financial markets as a giant casino is wrong," [writes British financial writer Daniel Ben-Ami], 'On the contrary, the modern financial markets are more often characterized by a fear of risk-taking than a reckless disregard for danger.'"