A global credit crisis caused by sub-prime mortgages is hardly the ideal backdrop for a business making unsecured loans to poor people without a credit history. Yet big microfinance companies, which do exactly that, seem to be in rude health. Mohammad Yunus, the unflappa-bly optimistic founder of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, a microfinance institution for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, is adamant that business remains unscathed. "We have not been touched in any way by the financial crisis," he said on a recent visit to Japan. "The simple reason is because we are rooted to the real econ-omy-we are not paper-based, paper-chasing banking. When we give a loan of $100, behind the $100 there are chickens, there are cows. It is not something imaginary."
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