Drive through a low-income neighborhood and you're likely to see streets lined with pawnshops, check cashers, rent-to-own stores, payday and tax refund lenders, auto title pawns, and buy-here-pay-here used car lots. We're awash in "alternative financial services" directed at the poor and those with credit problems. Howard Karger describes this world as an economic Wild West, where just about any financial scheme that's not patently illegal is tolerated. Taking...

Around the globe, poverty has held too many people in its grip for too long. While microfinance, small loans to impoverished individuals, initially attracted attention in the press, it didn't achieve the scale, scope, and profitability necessary to substantially combat poverty. All that changed with the author's creation of SKS Microfinance. In this work, he reveals how he pieced together the best of both philanthropy and (to his surprise) capitalism...