ABSTRACT
This chapter provides some background to the microcredit model that emerged in the 1980s as one of the distinct microeconomic policies within the global neoliberal project. It highlights the disruptive impacts of the move to 'financialization' across the global economy, of which the microcredit movement is a constituent part, particularly its links to rising inequality and ballooning debt levels. The chapter discusses the wider policy alternatives that are required in order to move from financing recovery in the aftermath of the global financial crisis towards financing sustainable and equitable development. Once a crisis looms, currency devaluations to improve export prospects simultaneously increase the value of foreign-currency denominated debt. Expanding trade and advances in communications have certainly been important in connecting and shrinking the world over the past thirty years, indeed, in making parts of that world more prosperous. However, these were also features of the post-war era of regulated market capitalism and the accompanying pattern of partial globalization.
