Alex Counts, CEO of the Grameen Foundation, pointed me to a fine report the foundation did for the Gates Foundation on New Frontiers in Micro-Savings. In it, Muhammad Yunus, that font of unworkable ideas for delivering financial services to the poor (I'm kidding, OK?), proposes ways to provide microdeposit insurance, ways that include the idea I tossed out for discussion a couple of days ago:I take seriously the commentary on this blog that deposit insurance wouldn't work if the insurer lacked the power to take over failed banks. But aren't the risks that an insurer (lacking such power) would take basically the same (or less) than those taken by investors in microcredit? Can someone explain the fundamental difference?
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