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  • vinabath
    03-25 04:40 PM
    BiggerPockets.com looks like a nice website. It's for real estate investors. I just signed up on this web-site as I'm closing on a 4-family house next month.

    If you make money using Biggerpockets... send me $100.:D





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  • unitednations
    08-02 12:50 PM
    Thanks UN


    245i is a good example of correct intention but poor execution.

    It caused a surge of labor filings for people who were here illegally. It allowed people who were beneficiaries of i-130's to also jump over to labor cert cases afterwards when they say nothing was happening with family petitions.

    it really caused a drain to department of labor at the state level in the heavily populated states. This is when all the drama began (companies setting up show in delaware, maine, new hampshire, south dakota).

    Just with how the laws work; different agencies; different fuding, different jurisdictions; it is difficult for the agenices to do process improvement because congress doesn't ask them if they can handle a law change. Law gets changed and the agencies don't have enough time to implement or get ready for it; and then we all crib about it.

    I know everyone is in a bit of a high right now that they can file 485's but without increasing quota or allowing more people to get approved; we will definitely see some anxiety from many people.

    Honestly; my biggest worry is the people who work at consulting companies and want to leave the first chance they get. Every time a company files a 140, h-1b; it gives a chance for uscis to go through the whole immigration history of a company. At certain points the number of 140's will be greater then the actual number of people working at the company. If they start detecting a pattern that everyone is leaving;it will look like company is set up for immigration purpose.

    California service center was just getting tough with this before they stopped doing 140's. There were a few big bodyshoppers where california service center denied the 140's and one of the reasons were that they didn't have a full time and permanent job for the person. In the decision; they went to such an extent as to going to company web-site and seeing the positions posted were at client locations for 3 to 6 months; they went to dice to see their postings, etc. and denied the cases. I think there will be an issue with this.





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  • qplearn
    11-15 09:29 AM
    There is no change in his strategy; but what is interesting is: he is now claiming that many of the new (freshmen) Democrats are in fact "Lou Dobb Democrats." :) Is he suggesting that they support his stand?

    He is also claiming now that he never opposed legal immigration beyond the 1 million that enters every year. He must have forgotten about his daily telecast on H1Bs (in 2003-2004), whose number is well within the limits of 1 million. What was he screaming about then?

    Lou Dobbs is losing it, I think, which can only be a good sign. But if CNN were to fire him, that will be the best thing to happen.





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  • lakshman.easwaran
    07-10 03:19 PM
    After going through this post
    I checked my I 94 last entered in 2006 it has different number than other I 94
    I am working with only one company since 2004
    They wrote company name src number correct on I 94
    but number is not same as the one on I 797 bottom totally different

    should i get it corrected ? How


    I do not think you have to correct anything since your last entry I-94 card will have different number from that in 797 approval notice. I-94 number has to be the same in last entry card and 797 only if you have a situation like me as below

    1) Last entry to US in 2004 - Hence have an I-94 card.
    2) Switched employer in 2006. So received new 797 approval notice alongwith updated I-94.

    In my case, the updated I-94 and the last entry I-94 card have the same I-94 number.

    Hope this helps.



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  • ssa
    06-25 03:28 PM
    You are right, different areas will bottom at different times. But it's relatively easy to judge whether your area has bottomed or not:

    1. Check if the rents and mortgage payments for the comparable properties are similar. Remember to own a house you need to have sterling credit history + come up with 20% down. So your mortgage payment + tax + insurance should at least be equal to rent if not less because you are paying premium in terms of putting 20% down which renters do not have to do.

    2. Bubble began forming around 2000 to 2002 depending on the area. Check past sales prices for comparable homes in the same area around that time because prices back then were still realistic. If the asking price now is same as the price then + 1-2.5% price appreciation per year to adjust for inflation then it's a reasonable price. Ignore the peak around 2005-2006.

    If your purchase price meets both these criteria you know you have a good deal. Go ahead and buy.

    If you have only been reading all the doomsday articles on the net about another nosedive in the realestate market, then I must suggest you to step out and smell the coffee. Other than in a few areas like Detroit and Miami, the home prices are close to stable and are not heading to fall another 10%. When people write articles they want to sensationalize thier reports. What's happening in Detriot will not be happening everywhere in the nation. Real estate markets are very local and cannot be generalized. So anyone that is thinking that there is going to be another HUGE drop in home prices are mistaken.

    Yes, you are right, absolutely no one can time the market. That is why it is a great strategy not to speculate, but go by the fact that real estate prices are affordable now and interest rates are the lowest in recent history. Don't think that just because there was a bubble you'll now get good homes for anything more than 5% discount.

    Remember that you probably have a job in the city you live in, and that you are continually employed, means that there are other people around you with jobs. They are ready to snap up homes even before you get to see it from the inside. I see homes that are in bad shape in my county (Fairfax, VA) sitting in the market for months. But the ones that are good goes under contract in less than a week.





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  • lfwf
    08-06 04:13 PM
    Are you pascal with a different ID by any chance? :), I don’t know, I thought I saw pascal id above the previous post before the id changed to Ifwf

    Don't know how you saw that :-)
    I wish, but no! How do you change the id on a post anyway? And if you delete a post it should show as a deleted post shouldn't it? If you know, share the secret, might be of some use :-)))

    ps: Might involve a serious gender change too!



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  • Refugee_New
    01-06 03:56 PM
    When (so called) indian leaders will learn from Isreali counterparts ??

    Didn't Narendra Modi followed the footstep of Isreali counterparts by killing innocents in Gujarat?

    Its upto Indians to decide which type of leaders we need. Like Gandhi or Modi.





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  • panky72
    09-27 11:07 PM
    If you visit this website, you can read Obama's policies on legal Immigration reform. It looks like Obama and Joe Biden plan to fix the legal immigration system and improve processing speed due to bureaucratic delays. He also introduced the legislation to speed up FBI background checks.

    Source: http://www.barackobama.com/issues/immigration/

    I found this on shusterman's regarding obama's views on immigration. Looks like he is all for family based immigration but no mention about employment based immigrants or green card backlogs.
    http://shusterman.com/pdf/obama908.pdf



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  • nogc_noproblem
    08-05 01:40 PM
    A little girl asked her mother, 'How did the human race appear?'

    The mother answered, 'God made Adam and Eve and they had children and so was all mankind made.'

    Two days later the girl asked her father the same question. The father answered, 'Many years ago there were monkeys from which the human race evolved.'

    The confused girl returned to her mother and said, 'Mom, how is it possible that you told me the human race was created by God, and Dad said they developed from monkeys?'

    The mother answered, 'Well, dear, it is very simple. I told you about my side of the family and your father told you about his.'





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  • willwin
    07-13 04:01 PM
    At the outset, I am not against EB3, but lets think about this for a moment. Any logic that we use to break up spillover between EB2 and EB3 can also easily be applied to EB1 and EB2. I'll repeat an earlier post of mine. "How can EB1 of 2008 get the GC immediately when EB2-I (in my case) has to wait for more than 4 years - clearly preference is at play here".

    Any spilt will artificially retrogress EB2 more than what it otherwise would have. Similarly one can always argue to artificially retrogress EB1 to give more visas to EB2 just because someone from EB2 is waiting for 4 years.
    Isnt that against the law. Any break up of spill over visas invalidates the category preference as per current law.

    Please also note that any unfavorable change to the EB1 category based on a hypothetical approval of an EB2/EB3 break up will invite the attention of Fortune 500 companies and prestigious research/educational institutions (who use EB1 the most) with all their political and financial resources at their disposal. That could put a halt to everything.

    Irrational passion calls for dispassionate rationality.

    Delax, EB1 with PD 2008 is getting their GC within months not because they utilize an 100% spill over from 'somewhere'. It is just because they do not have enough applicants in the queue and hence no retrogression.

    Honestly, 'i don't think' the 'advantage' that EB3 and EB2 have - using spillover from other categories. Correct me if I was wrong.



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  • kaisersose
    04-15 03:10 PM
    Are people seriously arguing that a child will not be happier in a bigger home, everything else remaining constant? Seriously, is someone actually arguing this?

    Seriously? Yes.

    Not me as I am arguing that a home is better than an apt, but some people here disagree for their own reasons.





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  • pthoko
    07-10 10:07 PM
    Hi UN,
    First of all my sincere gratitude to you for your patience and the time you put in to give a detailed reply to all cases.

    Here's my situation(I think a case of status violation)


    I did an L1 to H1 transfer in 2005. My L1 was valid till APRIL 2006. So my intention was to work with L1 employer till April 2006 and then switch to H1 employer.

    H1 employer also applied for a change of status, which I was not aware of that time. I asked the H1 company's lawyer whether I could continue with my L1 employer after getting the H1 and she said it's fine.

    So I got the H1B approval in Oct 2005, but still continued with L1 employer till APRIL 2006, then switched to H1.

    Recently I came to know that this could be an issue. When I was filling the G-325A form, I wondered if I specify that I worked with the L1 employer till APRIL 2006, would they catch this?? Even if they catch , how big an issue would this be??

    If I put the dates to reflect the dates to show that I quit my L1 employer in Oct 2005 itself, would this be an issue?? I guess in this case, if by any chance they ask for any further evidence like pay stubs or W2 in that period of time, I would be in trouble.



    From what I have read from the forum, A lawful re-entry should clear the violation in my case right?? I haven't filed the I-485 yet. My I-140 is pending.
    Do they catch this during I-140 stage??

    ALSO CAN THEY DENY H1B DUE TO PREVIUOS VIOLATION OF STATUS, WHILE I RE-ENTER?? This is my biggest fear now!!!

    Can I go to Canada/Mexico for stamping? where would I get an appointment at the earliest??




    Thanks.



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  • abracadabra102
    01-02 11:39 AM
    Non-state actors are mentioned a lot here. Who are these non-state actors and who is responsible for acts of these non-state actors? If a few Pakistani citizens cross over and strike Indian cities at random and disappear back into Pakistan, what are India's options? Just to pray that in some 30-50 years into future all Pakistani terrorists will somehow realize their folly and turn into saints?

    We are also missing the elephant in the room. India has 150 million muslims and we have our share of Hindu fundamentalists. These Hindu fundamentalist groups have been trying for a long time to equate terrorism to Islam (targeting Indian muslims) and Indian public at large rejected this notion so far (rightly so) and that may change in future and it may not be long before a Narendra Modi becomes Prime Minister. It will be a shame if a few terrorists destroyed that very tenet of India - "Unity in Diversity".





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  • nojoke
    04-14 04:15 PM
    Exactly. now before you jump ..let me say that this may not be applicable to you. but most of the people that I know of, who have very young kids ( 1 - 5/6 year olds) ..buying a house was a wrong decision. (and common sense says the same thing). Because they bought the house - either they had to slog extra or take up 2 jobs and/or spouse has to work. some of them had a baby sitter ..who would put the kid in front of the TV all day. some of the kids are/were at home all day with their mother (but no friends) and hence they were lonely. (wife does not know how to drive or only one car) ..some of the luckier ones were the ones who could afford to put them in all day daycare
    (but in this case ..kid hardly knows his parents well).
    in my humble opinion ..the best case is where a mother takes care of the son as long as possible and at the same time the kid plays with other kids of same age ..(there are definitely many exceptions) ...and most (neutral) people would say that those who rent would be more likely to have this best case.

    Exactly. This argument of buying house for kids is no argument. You can argue on either side. The problem is when NKR made a statement that it is big deal to not buy a house because your kid will ask "can you give back my childhood?". As if a 7 year old will regret not owning a house. The child will regret not owning a playstation3, eat chocalates all the time, play all time. We all know what we wanted when we were kids.;)



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  • riva2005
    04-06 09:06 PM
    you need to touch the bottom of barrel to go on another direction, this will be the bottom of the barrel I suppose

    these protectionist will realize as many H1B dependent companies virtual outsource all there jobs

    well in all seriousness I don't think this bill will be passed in senate,

    This bill may not be introduced in its current form anywhere.

    But I am sure they are going to use this bill to pull sections out of it and introduce it as amendments. Both sponsors of this bill are Judiciary committee. That makes it possible for them to put amendments not just on the floor, but also in the committee. If they think whole bill will not pass as a single amendment, they will put small pieces of it so that it can pass the roll-call one piece at a time.





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  • suavesandeep
    06-25 11:35 AM
    Sledge,
    Nobody is saying that the world is coming to and end in 2 years.IMHO myself and many others would agree that long term buying a house makes sense. The question is does buying now if you haven't already bought your primary residential home make any sense.

    From the current data, Do you think a guy who buys a house in 2009 would come ahead of somebody who would buys in 2011 when the housing market may have fully bottomed out ? I know its impossible to time the market. But all indicators to name a few below point that home prices should continue to decline.


    Unemployment is still on the way up. We will cross 10% anytime soon is a given.
    Excess housing inventory
    Home prices are still above the trend line. Historically its common for the correction to swing even below the trend line before it stabilizes.


    Again IMHO, If you haven't bought a home yet, Save so that you can make a bigger down payment (Own more of the house when you buy one) and check the market again mid 2010.

    Giving your example.
    Lets say guy buys in 2009, and another guy buys in 2011 (Assuming home prices would have further gone down using existing data points).. Who do you think would come ahead in 2019.





    I agree with you 100%. These guys here are all getting worked up as if the world will come to an end in 2 years and it is unreasonable to think beyong 2011. A regular investor like us, someone w/ a job, one who saves in the bank, and/or dollar cost averages in a 401(K), should never think short term.

    Let's see 10 years from now who will be in a better position - the guy who owned a home or a guy that is renting.

    Of course, some guys will start complaining about GC, but then other posts here are claiming that regardless of GC, buying a house now is dissasterous.



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  • EB3IFiasco
    08-05 10:41 PM
    We'll have to just make sure we file an amicus on behalf of the USCIS if a case like this goes forward...





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  • validIV
    06-05 11:43 AM
    Sorry but no matter how you spin it, owning a home is better than renting. Renting is not smart. period. your money is gone every month. You are not getting that money back.

    When you own a home, the money goes towards a mortgage, and although most of it goes to interest at first, all interest paid is tax deductible which is a huge chunk of change every year. I get more money back as an owner than a renter and in the long run I save more AND own the home.

    30 year renter vs 30 year home owner? That is not rocket science.


    here is a good point about long term housing prospects. I for one am glad that GC delay saved me from buying a house.
    this is from an article
    ------------------------------------
    Why do I think housing is in the tank for the long term?

    First, I listen to people smarter than I am - a key to success from investing to recreation league baseball. When my rec team had its first losing season - after twelve consecutive great seasons (two per year) I did the logical and hired a professional coach. They were winners the next season. Ditto for analyzing stuff - and I follow Ivy Zelman and Whitney Tilson. They have been dead on about the mortgage meltdown - and see a larger one coming.

    Listening to them, reading data and being objective has led me to see the key to a rebound in housing is clearing inventory - too much supply and too little demand, and since lower than five percent interest rates have not spurred buying, supply is the issue. Supply comes from the sale of existing homes, the sale of new homes, and the sale of foreclosed homes.

    * Typically ten to fifteen percent of Americans sell or want to sell their home in a given year. Recent survey data shows the number is now 30%. Keep that in mind.
    * New home sales are incredibly low. Market wisdom said home building stocks would rise once the new housing start rate hit a million and inventory became tight. New home starts are roughly half of that and there ain't no rebound. As the poet said, times, they be a changing.
    * People are not selling, and builders are not building, not just because people are not buying - it is because prices are low and going lower and the driver here is foreclosures. Data can be found here, there and everywhere but the salient data points are a) banks are accelerating foreclosures, b) the next wave of resets of mortgages, the cause of most foreclosures, does not peak until the summer of 2011, c) banks are already sitting on more than half a million homes they have not listed for sale, and the whopper is d) the New York Times has reported that there are nineteen million empty housing units and only six million are listed for sale.

    This last point, when combined with another couple of million foreclosed homes, then with desire for people wanting to sell their home as soon as they can, means excess inventory for as far as the eye can see. I originally projected housing prices would, nationally, bottom at the end of 2011 and prices would begin to pick up in mid 2012. I may have been premature. With resets peaking in mid defaults will probably peak in early Q4 2011; this means foreclosure listings will peak in mid-summer 2012, after the peak selling season, not good for managing down inventory. Assuming demand picks up - a near heroic assumption at this time as interest rates will be higher and unemployment could be the same or higher at that time - you will start to see inventory declining in a meaningful way until 2013 at the earliest.

    I have focused on supply - was I too cavalier about demand? Well, that is more problematic - resets, defaults and foreclosures are fourth grade math and although the only thing I knew about housing was my own mortgage before this mess started, I can do fourth grade math and every forecast I have made about foreclosures and inventory has been right within a 30-45 day period.

    Using fourth grade math as our primary tool does have value in estimating demand. Roughly 40% of demand in the peak year - 2006 - was sub-prime or near sub-prime - and these buyers are out of the market for a considerable period of time. And a very large percentage - some analysts estimate as high as a third - of all sales were for investment and second homes. Most of this demand is gone for the foreseeable future. Add tightening credit standards, recession ravaged incomes and personal balance sheets, and a new frugality and it is hard to see demand in 2013 or 2014 climbing past 50% of demand in 2006. Even if the FHA does not go bust - which it will, requiring another Treasury bailout.





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  • aadimanav
    07-14 05:43 PM
    Please participate in this non-controversial (EB1 vs. 2 vs. 3 and Row vs. Non-Row Compatible) campaign.

    http://immigrationvoice.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20190

    Thanks,





    Ramba
    07-14 03:44 PM
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    It is very understandable the frustration of Eb3-I guys. The reason is very simple; supply Vs demand; nothing more nothing less. Both EB2 and EB3 gets about 40K visas per year. Since worldwide demand for EB3 is extremely very high, India gets abot 3000 visas per year. However, there is not much worldwide demand for EB2 visas, India and and China gets all spill over in EB2 catagory plus unused visas from EB1. This makes availability of visas in Eb2-for India and China is very much higher than EB3. I guess about 30 to 35K (out of 40K) visas goes to EB2 for both India and china. However in Eb3 both In and China gets 3K each. Just compare 30K vs 3k.

    Study the visa statistics for last 10 years at DOS website. http://travel.state.gov/visa/frvi/st...tics_1476.html
    Then, one can easily unserstand the demand for EB3 in worldwide. The reason is, unfortunatly EB3 has professionals and skilled workers catagory. There are thousands of skilled workers (who has just two years working experince with out much education) are in demand for EB3 numbers every year accross the world. This makes the availablity for India is just 3000. 1500 restarunt cooks with their dependents from India is sufficient to consume one year quota in Eb3. Thatswhy India stuck in 2001. It will be like that in future too. It will be in snail phase.

    So, it is not the DOS or CIS or DOL determines the movement of cutoff dates. It is the INA that contolls the allocation. DOS is just doing their job.

    The INA does not address how to give prefrence to a EB3 Indian guy with PD in 2001 with EB3-ROW guys with PD 2007. Every year EB3-ROW pours tons of new application. The demand from ROW will not dimnish, so India will get only 3000 by the virtue of increasing new demand by ROW form easch passing years. A ROW guy with PD 2007/2008/2009 will be in preference than a EB3 guy from India with PD 2002. Therefore there should be a mechanism to balance this effect. Unfortunatly there is no provision in INA. So, DOS may not help to overcome this, as DOS is a just a implementer of INA.





    Macaca
    12-29 07:32 PM
    �Can�t Be Done�

    Gibbons, 70, says he learned that lesson when he tried to raise 4 million pounds ($6.2 million) from two wealthy London- based nonresident Indian investors in November 2006.

    Talks failed because of differences over expectations for returns on equity and other contract terms, he says.

    �That�s what made me think this just can�t be done,� he says.

    Indian microlenders differ from Yunus�s Grameen Bank in key ways. To protect depositors� money after bankruptcies among nonbanking financial companies in the early 1990s, India�s Reserve Bank in 1997 made it more difficult for them to meet the requirements needed to take deposits from the public. Only 36 microlenders are registered as nonbank financial companies, according to information supplied by the Reserve Bank.

    �I Feel So Sad�

    Indian microlenders themselves borrow from banks at 13 percent or more on average and extend credit to the poor. They charge interest rates that can rise to 36 percent, says Alok Prasad, chief executive officer of the Microfinance Institutions Network, which represents 44 microlenders. He says all 44 firms are registered with the Reserve Bank.

    SKS Microfinance gets funds at about 12 percent interest and lends at 24.52 percent in Andhra Pradesh, spokesman Atul Takle says.

    In Bangladesh, Grameen Bank got a banking license in 1983, which allowed it to take deposits. It charges 5 percent for education loans and 8 percent for housing loans. Beggars can borrow for free, and interest on major loans is capped at 20 percent, Yunus says.

    �Microfinance has been abused and distorted,� he says. �I feel so sad because that�s not the microcredit I have created.�

    Indian microfinance has roots in decades-old informal community financing.

    Nongovernmental organizations pioneered cooperative lending, known today as self-help groups, with seed money from the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development. Encouraged by these projects, the state-backed bank worked to tie borrowing groups to local bank branches in 1992.

    For-Profit Companies

    Nonprofit organizations subsequently got involved as middlemen between the banks and the borrowers. By 2005, nonprofits such as SKS and Share Microfin had turned themselves into profit-making enterprises.

    Akula�s SKS attracted investors such as Khosla Ventures, Sun Microsystems Inc. co-founder Vinod Khosla�s venture capital firm.

    Capital flowed into the new industry from commercial banks, venture firms and private equity.

    Sequoia Capital, in Menlo Park, California, and Bangalore- based Infosys Technologies Ltd. Chairman N.R. Narayana Murthy were among the backers. George Soros�s Quantum Fund has a 0.37 percent stake in SKS.

    Private-equity investors alone have put $515 million into Indian microfinance companies since 2006, research service Venture Intelligence says.

    �Explosive Growth�

    More than half of the 66 Indian microlenders tracked by Micro-Credit Ratings are for-profit firms. Some 260 microlenders had 26.7 million borrowers and 183.44 billion rupees of loans outstanding as of March, according to the Microfinance India State of the Sector Report 2010.

    �Over the last two years, we�ve been seeing explosive growth,� says N. Srinivasan, who wrote the report. �Microfinance institutions found that it�s easy to make money. Not that making money is bad, but when you go overboard and say you require money for growth, you get into problems.�

    Polelpaka Pula, a mother of two, says she saw microlenders rushing into her village of Pegadapalli to compete for business -- with tragic results.

    Her husband, Prakash, a painter who made 250 rupees on a good day, first borrowed from a group of villagers to build a house. Each participant of the so-called chit fund contributed 1,000 rupees a month and took a turn collecting the entire sum.

    Microfinance officers from L&T Finance Ltd., Spandana Sphoorty Financial Ltd., Share Microfin and SKS began offering loans in the village starting in 2004, she says.

    The couple, already contributing to their village fund, took five more loans totaling 64,000 rupees. That saddled them with payments of 7,300 rupees a month, more than Prakash�s 5,000 rupee maximum monthly income.

    Loan Shark

    When Prakash ran out of microlenders to borrow from, he went to a village loan shark, who charged 100 percent interest.

    With no way out and debt from multiple lenders ballooning, Prakash hanged himself in November 2009, his wife says.

    The small house he�d dreamed of was never completed. Only the foundation stands next to the home of his parents, a tiny structure with a roof of palm leaves.

    Spandana says that neither of the couple�s names is in its database. The company says the media wrongly attribute harassment cases to microfinance, especially when Spandana is mentioned.

    �The trigger factors for suicide are manifold, such as stressful situations at home,� the company said in an e-mail response to questions about the death.

    Subprime Parallel

    SKS spokesman Takle says its staff has practiced responsible lending for the past 12 years. Its employees are not paid based on the loan size or repayment percentage.

    �This ensures against giving out larger loans than what a borrower can repay,� Takle says. A spokesman for L&T Finance declined to comment.

    Overlending in Andhra Pradesh calls to mind the U.S. subprime crisis, says Lakshmi Shyam-Sunder, director of corporate risk at International Finance Corp. in Washington, which invests in microlenders.

    �Subprime lending was initially seen as extending homeownership to poorer people, doing good,� Shyam-Sunder says.

    As the industry expanded, making a profit became more important to some lenders, she says. �Tension arises when you work on activities with both social goals as well as commercial interests,� she says, adding that it�s important to strike the right balance.

    Companies chasing profits amid poor corporate governance are undermining the intent of microfinance, Cashpor�s Gibbons says.

    �Lending Gone Wild�

    During the past five years, the number of microloans in India has soared an average of 88 percent a year and borrower accounts have climbed 62 percent annually, giving India the world�s largest microfinance industry, Micro-Credit Ratings says.

    �This is unrestrained consumer lending gone wild,� Gibbons says. �It�s not about poverty reduction anymore.�

    Sumir Chadha, managing director at Sequoia Capital India Advisors Pvt., says that without a profit motive it�s hard to find anyone who will lend to the poor.

    �Capitalism doesn�t have to be a bad thing,� says Chadha, whose firm has a 14 percent stake in SKS. �If you can�t profit off the poor, it means that no companies will service the poor -- and then they will be worse off than earlier.�

    Chand Bee�s Tale

    For Chand Bee, a 50-year-old who led three borrowing groups in Andhra Pradesh, too many loans almost became her undoing.

    She says she ran away from home after collectors began harassing her. She took out multiple loans beginning in 2005, and she names Spandana as one of the lenders.

    Some of the money paid for the funeral of her eldest son. When she fell behind on payments, she says loan officers threatened to humiliate her in front of neighbors and pressed her to sell her small grandchildren into prostitution.

    She left her slum in Warangal, where she lived with her deaf husband, some of her eight grown children and more than a dozen grandchildren.

    After living as a beggar for a year, Chand Bee returned home in early November when family members told her that the state ordinance that went into effect on Oct. 15 had suspended some collections. A Spandana spokeswoman says none of the company�s four customers in the district with the name Chand Bee has had trouble repaying.

    Almost every household in the slum of 250 people -- where barefoot children play in lanes between rows of dilapidated shacks -- has taken several loans. So many microlenders ply their trade that residents refer to them by the days they collect: Monday company, Tuesday company and so on.

    Debt Free

    Rabbani, a widow with four children, is one of the few women who are debt-free. She started a spice shop with two loans, which she repaid with her small profit. After seeing her neighbors� pains, she vowed never to seek another microloan.

    SKS says 17 of its clients have committed suicide, none because of loans being in arrears or harassment.

    �Suicide is a complex issue,� Akula says.

    Sitting in the second-floor conference room of SKS�s seven- story headquarters in Hyderabad, where posters of smiling women running handicraft and tailor shops decorate the doors of elevators, Akula says there�s nothing wrong with seeking profits.

    �What does it matter to a poor woman how much an investor makes?� says Akula, dressed in his trademark knee-length kurta shirt from Fabindia, a seller of ethnic clothes made by rural craftsmen. �What matters to her is that she gets a loan on time at a reasonable rate that allows her to earn higher income.�



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