tom_boy wrote:I think this discussion has really digressed. But it has been interesting for me.
I guess a major question to be answered is " Do mobile loans lead to an increase in money supply? "
Money may not be available to the middle class conventional / traditional bank borrower, but has money become more available to the 70% of low income earners that constitute this economy?
Does the typical mobile loan borrower think about interest rates? Would it be a moot point trying to use normal free market logic to say with high borrowing rates, inflation rate will slow down? Of course the premise of this free market theory is that borrowers are rational and will avoid borrowing when rates go up and vice versa. Does this apply to mobile loan applicants?
As a follow up, if we apply a principle that all human beings are the same and aspire to the same things in life, why is it that in states of low interest rates when credit is availed to middle class via conventional bank borrowing, most of the increased money supply goes to consumption.
However, when this same credit is availed to the mobile borrowers we have swallowed the lie that most of this money is going to fund and capitalize hawker and mama mboga businesses. Is this not a great disconnect in thinking and application of economic theory.
They must find it difficult....... those who have taken authority as the truth, rather than truth as the authority. -G. Massey.