Last summer now seems to have had an air of Great Gatsby-ish endings, and now a bittersweet cooler summer wind blows. The warmth still reaches us, by human means now, not accouterments, and we need one another now more than ever to keep warm. We are indeed all connected, and...

My daughter and I spent the solstice in the heart of Paris, first at the Swedish Cultural Center with its May pole, childrens' songs and dances, flower wreaths on their heads...and then moved from courtyard opera concerts to street corner jazz with masses of friends and Parisians as June 21...

A good friend of mine, Brigitte Marti, a French scholar living in the US, is married to a French doctor who works both at Johns Hopkins and in a French hospital, and has been organizing meetings with concerned citizens and the US Congress for some time to discuss the future...

I recall Muhammad Yunus talking about how the workers at the Grameen Bank loved working with the beggar program, which extends tiny microloans to beggars to help them buy things they can sell door to door. Dr. Yunus' patience with this wonderful program was exemplified when he would respond...

I spent a few years working with film festivals, and because of the stress, the endless needing to schmooze, entertain, deal with egos etc etc, I simply checked out. It did not seem to be enough about the movies and filmmakers and creative talent, but more about buzz and parties...

An Uplifting Story for a World in Financial Crisis! The multi-talented Phyllida Lloyd, director of Mamma Mia!, the highest grossing film ever made by a woman (and a team of women at that) has attached herself to the development of a feature fiction film based on the spread of microcredit...

One thing I learned very early on during these past few years of meetings with Muhammad Yunus is that he TRUSTS people, and because of that, people trust him. He trusted poor women with no collateral and gave them microloans, and they proved to him that they could pay back....

Arrival in Baltimore last week, where the life expectancy for some humans is lower than that in Bangladesh. Riding public transport, light rail, train and metro to the World Health Care Congress in D.C., where Bangladeshi Banker to the Poor Muhammad Yunus taught doctors and CEOs in the health industry...

There are a great many similarities between two US presidential trips to global meetings, overlapping with their first trips to Europe during their presidencies. In June of 2001, then President George W. Bush, arrived in the Swedish coastal city of Gothenburg, just prior to the EU meeting, and he somehow...

There have been two economies operating for too long and the dominant one has been excluding the majority of the humans on this planet. When it did include the poor, it abused them with subprime loans, no profit-sharing, then divided up their hard-earned cash into abstract financial products they all...

Muhammad Yunus always says that human beings are very creative, that we are all entrepreneurs, if given the chance. What it takes is faith, trust someone to believe in us...credire to believe in, is the basis of credit, which Yunus asserts is a human right.

Microentrepreneurs will be able...

Want to cheer yourself up during the financial crisis? Realize that the majority of the world, those who live on less than $2 per day, are so poor they don't even know there is a financial crisis! Or even better...realize that one of the most effective methods they...

This keeps getting better and better. While everything is crashing around us financially, Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke pledges his support to Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus and his banks for the poor in the US: Grameen America. Grameen will apply to act as a savings bank and will be...

The crowds in the U.S. waiting to hear Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner, and founder of the Grameen bank for the poor, are growing larger and larger. Standing ovations after Prof. Yunus speaks are the norm. Students and interested citizens wait in line as he signs copies...

One of the most interesting things about the appointment of Timothy Geithner as the head of the Treasury Department is that his entire life prepared him for the world we are living in today. Raised by a father, Peter Geithner, who ran the Microcredit program for Indonesia at the time...

Thank you Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, for your wonderful speech last Friday, January 23rd.

We have, with President Obama, someone who believes in development and diplomacy. Coming to the State Department yesterday sent a very strong signal. A few of you may even know, as I mentioned in...

The Huffington Post's front page link to the article describing President Obama's first day in office and his closing of CIA Black sites is extremely important. That the HuffPost put this front and center and that our President understands on a very deep level the need to create more...

My daughter is so excited that she is getting a new President for her birthday tomorrow! I am taking her out of school early here in Paris and we are gathering with friends from all over the world to watch the events. Today, my daughter and I are not only...

I hope that Obama will once and for all establish serious regulations which work not only for the financial community but also for the non-profit and foundation sector. There is so much abuse going on, and some of it is illegal and basically amounts to stealing money from the IRS...

I live in France where we already have a people-izing of government with the President marrying an ex-model just three months after his divorce and living a lifestyle of the rich and famous. The result of this is that, no matter how hard he tries, and how many serious things...