Here’s your Daily Brief for August 13th:

A Global Surge in Tiny Loans Spurs Credit Bubble in a Slum (via WSJ Subscription Req.) – Development economists will tell you that credit is necessary in the fight against poverty because it allows individuals and families to get through difficult times (eg. drought), send children to school, pay immediate medical bills, or start a small business. Micro-lending was introduced to address the lack of available credit for the world’s poorest, and has since become quite fashionable — maybe too fashionable.

Today’s Wall Street Journal looks at the swarm of micro-loans into India, and predicts a “bubble”. One of the quotes from the article reads, “Too much money is chasing too few good candidates.”

Indiscriminate loans not targeting the productive assets of the economy could be leading the world’s poorest citizens into unrecoverable debt.

Kenya Building Africa’s Largest Wind Farm (via Africa Business Source) – During my tenure in Kenya, I saw more solar panels than I’ve seen here in the US. In fact, most of the solar panels I saw were in the slums. There are two important characteristics we in the West can learn from poverty: 1.) Planning, and 2.) Efficiency.

KenGen, Kenya’s predominant electricity supplier, announced a new project to build one of the largest wind farms in the world. The wind turbines will be installed in the Lake Turkana region – hopefully they don’t face the same problem I did! (Scroll down to “The next morning we left Turkana…”)

SOCAP09 — Co-Founder Kevin Jones Discusses Intersection of Money and Meaning