Nobel Committee Slips Up

The Nobel committee gave the peace prize to Jimmy Carter in 2002 in an acknowledged attempt to insult President Bush. Arafat is dead. Bin Laden probably wouldn't show up to accept the award. Cindy Sheehan jinxed it by saying she was on the list -- although the list is highly secret. So, the Nobel committee slipped up and actually gave the Peace Prize this year to someone who deserves it. Or maybe it was the thing about women.

DHAKA, Oct 14, 2006 (AFP) - A tiny Grameen bank loan to buy a cow was a lifeline for 32-year-old Margina who now runs a successful rice business but was once so poor she could not afford to eat. Like millions of others, Margina saw her life transformed through a 3,000 taka (42 dollar) loan from the Grameen Bank founded by Muhammad Yunus, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for lifting millions out of poverty through his pioneering concept of microcredit. "When I first started borrowing from Grameen bank 12 years ago, I was very poor," said Margina, from Kathali village in the northern Mymensingh district. "I used to only eat one meal a day and some days I could not eat at all. My husband did not have any work and we lived in miserable conditions," said Margina, who uses one name. The bank, which targets women because it believes they are better than men at running family finances, has given small loans to more than 6.6 million people in Bangladesh to help them become self employed.

Once again, proof positive that capitalism, self reliance and entrepreneurship work better than government programs.