Cambridge University economist Ha-Joon Chang puts part of its popularity down to a “strange alliance” between a financial industry that “does nasty things to make money, and people who genuinely wanted to help the poor but were against the collective approach”. What’s more, it enabled some institutions to say they cared about the poor without having to spend on social welfare, he argues. It’s a worrying point he makes in a paper with Milford Bateman, charting the microcredit saga from “hubris to nemesis”. The story of microcredit, they argue, can even shift the blame for poverty on to the poor themselves. This leaves us with a potentially more unsettling question: did donors and supporters truly believe small loans could bring about a historic reduction in poverty? Or was the microcredit story a convenient guise, at least for some, to pursue personal gain and other aims? More here.