Bangladeshi Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus on Tuesday warned that the global economic crisis will hit the worlds poorest people the hardest and that "there is no bailout package for them." The microfinance pioneer, speaking during a visit to Tokyo, said the ongoing world-wide downturn is an opportunity to build a more people-focused financial system, not one "based in a fantasy economic world."
"The financial system has to be totally redesigned," he said. "This financial system didnt work for the people anyway. It worked for the rich people, yes. Big business, yes. But not for people in general." Yunus and his Grameen Bank were honoured with the Nobel peace award in 2006 for efforts to lift people out of extreme poverty by giving them small loans.
He said the fact that "a small number of people in one country (the US) can create such a disastrous situation for all the people of the world" shows "how fragile our system is, how weak the foundation of our system is." "The real victims of the crisis are the people who have made no contribution whatsoever to this crisis, the bottom half of the world population," he said. "They will be the ones who will lose their jobs, the ones who will lose income and livelihood and food... There is no bailout package for them."