Phoenix  Winning any kind of global financial justice for low-and-moderate income families is admittedly a slog, but misery loves company, and I cannot resist keeping you in the loop as ACORN International pushes forward on these campaigns.

Good news first.  Our report, “Mega Troubles for Microfinance” www.acorninternational.org, picked up some friends in high places, which felt very nice, though we will have to see if it develops into real progress.  A letter from the Swiss international development agency indicated that they were in agreement with us that microfinance does not reduce poverty, and in line with our recommendations they had already scaled back involvement.  They were still hopeful about microcredit, though we are not sure what that really means other than saying that the poor should save, which is not exactly a development program.  Similarly when we issued our report the head of the United Kingdom parliamentary committee which has oversight over development joined in our argument heartily and indicated that they will take the report up more seriously now that the summer is past.  All very encouraging since we feared that we might burn at the stake for heresy!

On the other hand there is Western Union.  A long, as these things go, direct conference call between leaders of ACORN International and ACORN Canada with representatives from the Loveland, Colorado based king of remittances was difficult and indecisive.  Western Union conceded that there fees were not the 5 to 6% they claimed in their correspondence, but tried to argue that they were transparent nonetheless even though perhaps not fully.  If you can follow that sentence, you must have been behind the looking glass with us.  Their primary argument continued to rest in a defense of competition, which essentially is to say that they charge what the market will bear, until the market changes, and in response to ACORN International’s three reports on these questions tried to argue that there were 16,000 remittance channels so our dozen countries might just be out of luck.  We have pleaded with them for a direct face-to-face meeting in hopes of making real progress, and they agreed to consider it, but promised nothing.

Meanwhile we are pursuing meetings of the major countries who are soon looking at development issues to see if there might be a way to push ahead on financial justice for the global poor at those forums.  Optimism is boundless, but reality continues to intrude.