The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to a Bangladeshi economist and his bank, which gives out microcredit loans to the rural poor. I heard about this program in a documentary a year ago or so. The trick is that instead of asking for collateral, it loans money, without interest, only to those who can prove that they own less than half an acre of land. The deal also includes free life insurance. The bank is owned by the borrowers, all 6.5 million of them, and 96% of whom are women. The loan recovery rate is 98.5%. It's brilliant, and just the kind of thing that the Nobel Prize is for.