The Community Foundation of Utah

Microfinance, the movement that aims to help lift the world's poor into better lives, has grown so popular that some of its most ardent supporters are wringing their hands over the direction it has taken, the New York Times reports.

Muhammad Yunus, the economist who received the 2006 Nobel Prize for his pioneering microfinance efforts in Bangladesh, has said that microcredit interest rates should be 10 percent to 15 percent above the cost of capital. According to Yunus, anything beyond that rate constitutes loan sharking. By that measure, 75 percent of microfinance institutions worldwide would fall into that category, according to data from the Microfinance Information Exchange.

Read the full Times article here.