A Special on small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) by the South Asia based Financial Express explores various angles of the evolving SME development movement from the very heart of the original microfinance revolution: Bangladesh.  Once you start really paying attention to development trends, it’s amazing to see how one new focus can receive little to no attention and then within a span of years, emerge out of the dust as the next ‘big thing’- all of a sudden 2005 is the year of microfinance.  In researching an upcoming overview on SMEs and their role in sustainable development for the Earthtrends project, I have observed something similar happening with the small business sector (not to be confused with microenterprise). 

I am forever humbled by the ability of those in academia to engage in and inspire catfights that rival some of the verbal battles I observed tutoring elementary school children last year. Few bring it out worse than Joseph Stiglitz, who recently released his new book Making Globalization Work, the follow-up to his fiery denunciation of the Washington Consensus brand of economic liberalization in Globalization and its Discontents.

Stephen Kotkin of the NY Times wins the award for bad kitty scratch: