The Robin Hood Tax is the UK version of the Tobin Tax which was at the beginning of ATTAC in France ten years ago.

As an anti-poverty campaign, it is more pragmatic than the economic theories of Tobin Tax definitions or the political demands of the Attac network.

Supported by a coalition of 48 organisations, the Robin Hood Tax campaign spells out what the income should be spent on.

And in the spirit of our times, it uses Twitter and YouTube.

The video is set to private until the launch which is set to 0.05am in parallel with the 0.05% tax that Robin Hood wants to take.

However, Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, dismissed the idea of a Tobin Tax only recently, according to the FT.

Of course, this tax doesn’t get to the root of all evils, but at least it’s bound to capture people’s imagination!

Updates here.

This article is a review that took place at the launch of the Bangladesh Microfinance Statistics for 2007.

A Global Marshall Plan for Micro-Credits
as part of a Global Pact for Sustainability

Entry into a new quality of a global eco-social market economy

In the present crisis of the global economy the fate of the world community will be decided primarily by the degree, in which we are successful in finally securing a convincing, sustainable development for the benefit of all citizens of this earth. To this aim the consultations on systems for an improved global control of the world financial institutions are a valuable, but still far from a sufficient response.

Especially important at this time are great-hearted measures, which offer the weakest in the global community and therewith those, who are the most strongly affected by the worldwide economic crisis, direct support and perspectives. Therefore we recommend two concrete actions:

• Global Marshall Plan for worldwide, comprehensive micro-credit systems
The G20-nations should raise a joint fund, into which 10 billion US dollars be paid per year for the next three years. This money should be used exclusively to establish micro-credit organizations area-wide in all poor regions of the world, where they are not yet sufficiently available. According to the experience of the Grameen Bank and other similar institutions, 3 million US dollars are enough to establish a new micro-credit system in one region, which, as a rule, can finance itself after three years. With 30 billion US dollars 10,000 new micro-credit systems could be started in the next three years. Thus, within just three years time, it could be guaranteed that the poorest people all over the world would have access to micro-credits. In this way a perspective, which has already been field proven more than 130 million times, could be jointly created as a solution for the poverty trap.

• 10 percent earmarking for investments in social business
Presently more and more enterprises and joint ventures are being established worldwide, whose mission lies exclusively in the solution of the most pressing social problems, such as generating sustainable energy, access to clean water etc. Muhammad Yunus calls this “social business” and requested at the World Economic Forum 2009 in Davos, that at least 10 percent of all the special measures in the context of the present worldwide economic crisis should be earmarked for investments in such social businesses. We emphatically agree with this recommendation. More and more social businesses are now being established in the ecological sector, for example Grameen Shakti. Up to now they have installed 160,000 solar units in poor households in Bangladesh and by 2012 the number is to grow to 7 million. Thus social business is also an extremely attractive approach for the urgently necessary ecological shift.

These two actions also take the following situation into account: An economic recovery after the present collapse can gain a powerful and sustainable perspective far better in the backlog development of those, who have not yet gotten their fair share, than in the increase in the abundance of a minority of very rich persons. The systematic development of those two-thirds of mankind, who up to now live in poverty, is not only morally overdue, but it is, also from an economic point of view, what is necessary now. What is special about the two recommended measures: besides their immediate humanitarian effects, they are at the same time also perhaps the most intelligent and effective global promotion of the economy.

Trusting in your foresight,

First Signees: Dr. Franz Alt, Publisher;
Frithjof Finkbeiner, Head Global Marshall Plan Foundation;
Dr. Franz Fischler, former Commissioner of the European Union for Agriculture; Prof. Dr. Ashok Gangadean, Director World Commission on Global Consciousness;
Dr. Heiner Geißler, former Minister of Germany;
Celso Grecco, Founder Social Stock Exchange at BOVESPA, Brazil;
Prof. Dr. Prabhu Guptara, Head Wolfsberg Institute;
Prof. Dr. Hazel Henderson, world renowned Economist and Futurist;
Dr. Ashok Khosla, Chairman Development Alternatives and President Club of Rome;
Prof. Dr. Dr. Ervin Laszlo, President Club of Budapest;
Dr. Rupert Neudeck, Founder Cap Anamur and Grünhelme;
Dr. Christian Neugebauer, Editor-in-chief “Glocalist”;
Wolfgang Pekny, platform footprint;
Prof. Dr. Dr. Franz Josef Radermacher, Member Club of Rome and President Global Economic Network;
Peter Spiegel, Head Genisis Institute for Social Business and Impact Strategies,
Prof. Dr. Dr. Ernst U. von Weizsäcker, Co-Chair International Panel on Sustainable Resource Management

After having had a meeting with Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, he asks “who is creditworthy?” in a new light.

The introducer of the IMF said that they share Dr. Yunus’ vision of a world with less poverty…

Grameen America, started by a Bangladeshi in New York, has now 500 women clients and is seeking a license to set up Credit Unions – eventually in any state.

He advocated to turn the crisis into the opportunity of creating an inclusive system with a new point of normalcy, not just a club for the rich.

Dr. Yunus’ presence and talks were thus a ‘call of conscience that cannot be trivialised’…

The German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development has now asked the Development Bank KfW to provide a fund of $m 130 to alleviate shortfalls for microcredit institutions.

The Minister for Development said: “We have to make sure that those who contributed least to the crisis, don’t suffer from it the most.”

World turmoil may spur Islamic finance
Afp, Doha  – The  Daily  Star  Dhaka
Wednesday,  October 29, 2008

The fast growing Sharia financial system may receive a further boost as an alternative to capitalism amid the credit crunch and banking crisis, Islamic academics and clerics believe.

Already said to be worth 300 billion dollars and expanding at 15 percent a year, the Islamic system forbids the levying or payment of interest, preferring shared ownership and splitting of profits.

The global economic meltdown shows “the need for a radical and structural reform of the global financial system. The system based on the principles of Islam offers an alternative which could reduce risks,” Hatem al-Naqrashawi, head of theological studies at Doha University, told AFP.

“Islamic banks don’t buy credit but manage concrete assets… which shelters them from the difficulties that American and European banks are experiencing,” explained Abdel Bassat al-Shibi, managing director of Qatar International Islamic Bank.

Islamic finance is different from capitalism in two main ways. It bans interest-bearing loans, seen as usury, a practice forbidden by Islam, and also forbids speculation. Instead, it favours sharing risks and profits between a bank and a client.

Sharia compliant products include Ijara, a way of buying a house through a lease and subsequent ownership, rather than through a mortgage. Others are Musharaka, the sharing of profits and losses, and Murabaha, under which the seller declares the profit margin being made on the sale of a commodity.

Murabaha is seen as a way of enabling a buyer to avoid taking an interest-bearing loan, though some Islamic scholars say it is too similar to the charging of ‘riba’, or interest.

In the past three decades, the number of Islamic financial institutions has risen above 300, spread among 75 countries. Their total assets are more than 300 billion dollars and are growing an at average rate of 15 percent a year, according to studies.

“The collapse of capitalism based on usury and paper and not on the trading of goods on the market is proof that it is in crisis and shows the Islamic economic philosophy is holding up,” prominent Egyptian-born Qatar-based cleric Sheikh Yussef al-Qaradawi told a recent conference in Doha .

“We have all the wealth… the Islamic nation has all or nearly all the oil and we have an economic philosophy which no one else has,” he said, referring to the fact that Islamic countries, headed by Saudi Arabia, hold a large part of the world’s proven crude oil reserves.

Suleiman al-Audah, an influential Saudi cleric, called for an “international Islamic summit to define the framework and the stages of an Islamic economic alternative.”

Some Islamists admit, however, that this alternative is not yet operational.

“Theoretically, the Islamic economic system offers a complete and solid mechanism… but in practice, the Islamic banking experience is not yet mature, because it offers limited products like ‘Murabaha’,” Audah, a moderate Islamist, told AFP.

His caution is shared by Egyptian Islamist intellectual Fahmi Howaidi, for whom the Islamic system “could bring solutions to certain banking problems but cannot be a magic wand” to end the financial upheaval which is shaking the world.

But poverty begins at home: in the UK I have not only met many victims of banks and other institutions but also of lawyers! When people, especially farmers, commit suicide because of overindebtedness, bankruptcies or other financial pressures we ought to look at what can be done here, at our doorstep.

The Oxford Research Group has published Beyond Terror to illustrate how climate change is a much more real danger than potential acts from terrorists.

The Forum for Stable Currencies has published a Public Credit Petition to raise awareness among the general public, journalists and politicians about the questionable scarcity of money when ‘green money’ is badly needed.

Will you click and sign?

Charities forced to do more with less

from CNN

Ordinary Americans aren’t the only ones being punished by tough economic times. Charities say they need help, too.

Inflation jeopardizes Argentina anti-poverty gains

from the Guardian

By Lucas Bergman
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina’s five years of breakneck economic growth has more than halved poverty in the country, but the government’s failure to curb inflation threatens to reverse that progress.

White poverty shock for Zuma

from the Independent On Line

ANC president Jacob Zuma expressed surprise at the level of poverty among white people during a tour of an informal settlement outside Pretoria on Friday.