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Blog posts by: Juliana Eades

"I love my little house"
By Juliana Eades The urgent tone with which the woman told her story made clear that she didn’t expect us to believe it. “We owned a big house, but after my divorce I lost it to the bank through foreclosure,” she began. With few housing choices she could afford, she decided to buy a manufactured home in a park. It was a lot smaller, but to her pleasant surprise, it met her family’s needs perfectly. And she could afford it. Then, bad news once more. Her park went up for sale. She feared she’d...
41 weeks 6 days ago | more
At the movies: Untangling the financial meltdown
By Juliana Eades It was only three years ago that we, as a national economy, teetered on the precipice of financial ruin, and many working families went over the cliff. Even recent history gets blurred by the mind-numbing complexity. Guest blogger and movie buff Dana Scott suggests an engaging and tolerable way to understand how this messy saga unfolded: HBO’s Too Big to Fail depicts the financial meltdown on Wall Street in 2008 (specifically from August until early October), with emphasis on...
45 weeks 5 days ago | more
Earmark would help small businesses save and create jobs
By Juliana Eades An editorial this week in the Nashua Telegraph dropped us in the middle of the current political storm over earmarks, mentioning that Senators Judd Gregg and Jeanne Shaheen had requested $500,000 for the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund in the federal spending bill. As uncomfortable as it feels to be mentioned in a piece headlined “earmark hypocrisy,” I have no problem talking about the request and what this funding could accomplish in New Hampshire. It’s no secret that the...
1 year 19 weeks ago | more
Do something important -- and don't lose the Sisters' money!
By Juliana Eades At a recent gathering of community development financial institutions, I was reminded of how our movement’s strategy, growth and success were shaped by the very first people who invested in us. As told by Opportunity Finance Network President Mark Pinsky, the Orders of Women Religious – Catholic nuns – began to invest their retirement funds in fledgling CDFIs in the early 1980s. Talk about a faith-based investment! CDFIs were so new, no one knew what they were or what they...
1 year 19 weeks ago | more
Yunus and us
By Juliana Eades Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and godfather of microcredit, told the New York Times the other day, “Microcredit should be seen as an opportunity to help people get out of poverty in a business way, but not as an opportunity to make money out of poor people.” This was in response to some microfinance lenders charging exorbitant interest rates – 100 percent or more – to borrowers in developing countries. Our experience running a microcredit program in New...
1 year 19 weeks ago | more