Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun finance Finance that is provided to unemployed or low-income people or groups

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Coined by Hans Dieter Seibel in 1990.

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Examples

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  • Can't believe this wasn't already in the database.

    "Lending tiny sums to people who live on a few dollars a day—street vendors in New Delhi, goatherds in Kenya—dosn't carry the glamour or financial rewards of haute banque. . . . But in an era when a great deal of freign aid has been wasted, or fallen into the hands of corrupt officials, microlending has built a track record of effective poverty relief. Microcredit pioneer Muhammad Yunus ... won the 2006 Nobel Prize. And microfinance, which now touches the lives of more than 100 million people, is one of the few bright spots in the troubled financial sector."

    —Daniel Gross, "Cheap Loans at Insanely High Rates? Give Us More." Newsweek, September 29, 2008

    September 27, 2008