Are we ready for a Grameen bank in the USA?

Grameen Bank (GB) has reversed conventional banking practice by removing the need for collateral and created a banking system based on mutual trust, accountability, participation and creativity. GB provides credit to the poorest of the poor in rural Bangladesh, without any collateral. At GB, credit is a cost effective weapon to fight poverty and it serves as a catalyst in the over all development of socio-economic conditions of the poor who have been kept outside the banking orbit on the ground that they are poor and hence not bankable. Professor Muhammad Yunus, the founder of "Grameen Bank" and its Managing Director, reasoned that if financial resources can be made available to the poor people on terms and conditions that are appropriate and reasonable, "these millions of small people with their millions of small pursuits can add up to create the biggest development wonder."

As of January, 2008, it has 7.44 million borrowers, 97 percent of whom are women. With 2,488 branches, GB provides services in 80,949 villages, covering more than 96 percent of the total villages in Bangladesh.

Grameen Bank's positive impact on its poor and formerly poor borrowers has been documented in many independent studies carried out by external agencies including the World Bank, the International Food Research Policy Institute (IFPRI) and the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS).

http://www.grameen-info.org/bank/index.html

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Is there any similarly structured bank in the U.S.?

Banks, the few times they were persuaded to extend a small loan to a poor person, would charge 35% or more. Most of the time, they weren't persuaded. That left poor people the village loan shark, someone who would demand double the loan by the end of the day. People were lucky to be able to afford a bowl of rice and a few vegetables after a hard day's work and paying the loan shark, only to repeat the process the following day.

Kiva loans charge 16% interest, about what it takes to cope with the paperwork of tracking each small loan. This is a bargain to people who are used to paying more than twice to a bank or a punishing amount to a local loan shark.

This interest rate will get people out of poverty. Loan sharks keep them in it.

Most of the money was paid back, too.

or was, before GOPs corrupted it at the local and national level.

Small businesses were supposed to be able to get small loans to upgrade equipment or improve stock at low interest. Unfortunately, the size of the business was determined by the number of employees. Corrupt officials gave loans to businesses with few salaried employees and hundreds of "contract workers," often giving their entire yearly budget to one large borrower who was politically connected.

It's time to reform the SBA. That is supposed to be our Grameen Bank.

nor are we likely to.
Simple interest (no compounding), weekly payments, no legal instruments, no penalties, easy restructuring, assistance priority based in part on gender, priority to social rather than economic goals. Never gonna happen unless and until the current system totally collapses.
http://www.grameen-info.org/bank/GBdifferent.htm

to do this exact thing in Queens NY.

So they are expanding into the U.S. then?

http://www.mises.org/story/2375

Forgive the source on this (Mises), but the same problems have been documented elsewhere, e.g. in the WSJ.

"The impact on the target population has not been stellar. Sudhirendar Sharma of New Delhi writes that "the effect of the Grameen strategy has not been to reduce poverty but only to create a debt trap for borrowers, who are being charged very high rates of interest relative to conventional banks."

Obviously the author didn't bother researching what loans to the poor cost at conventional banks. The poor are seen as high risk and the returns on the loans hardly worth the paperwork. When poor business people can actually get loans, the interest rates are not what those banks charge the rich, undoubtedly what this author is basing his statement on. More often than not, the poor have to go to a village loan shark. That guarantees they remain in poverty, while the realistic rate from Grameen gives them a chance to escape it.

Always mistrust things you read at a few sites out there. Mises.com is one of them.