I am living in Brazil at the moment and studying at FGV, a well known business school. One thing I love about classes is here is how much we focus on not only creating businesses that will thrive in low-income economies but that will pull the world from poverty. There is no doubt in my mind that private business running of free market principles (we have never seen another period in history where the free market is so strong world wide) will literally pull the majority of people world wide from poverty—unfortunately free markets never toot their own horn and the credit will be stolen by politicians and their lousy redistribution programs. But nonetheless, in spite of damaging “do-gooders”, our world is on the upswing.

One thing that surprised me is how many cell-phones people have in Brazil. I think anyone who moved away from Brazil in the 90´s would be shocked to see all the phones that have reached deep into the lower classes. Not only will cell phones increase the ability to talk more easily, but the give Internet access to millions and if Wizzit, a revolutionary bank in South Africa, has anything to do with it, they will also give access to bank accounts (this video is worth the watch- oh and I love their tagline “my bank in my pocket”):

This type of banking is in the process of revolutionizing the world.

Micro Credit is another type that started a long time ago. Now many organizations have this type of credit to help third world counties from poverty. The LDS (or Mormons) church has created one of the largest micro credit systems in the world.

But Micro Credit could also evolve with the Internet. Ebay has created MicroPlace.com, a place you can go and make micro credit loans from your own computer. Kiva is another one of these types of places. They both remind me of Prosper in many ways.

After we reviewed all of these places in class, I asked the question, “with investment opportunities like these, ATM,s Internet banking, the ability to make loans from person to person, why do we even need banks anymore?” My belief is that we will not need them, at least not in their current form. But like big government (which I firmly believe we do NOT need) these banks are powerful and it will be interesting to see how long they can maintain themselves even when they are no longer needed.

I think we live in such an exciting time. I don´t consider myself a multitasker but, right now I have my new FireFox 3 web browser (I LOVE it by the way) with tabs open for the following: my bank, my facebook, my blog, my email, my blackboard… I can get a homework assignment done and emailed in a very short period of time. If the web can speed me up this much, then why not the rest of the world. It is cheap and gives anyone the ability to dream. Dreams are powerful.

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