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June 1, 2009
The former Mexican president had an awakening when he talked with Grameen Bank head Muhammad Yunu that well run financial co-operatives could solve major world financial problems for the poor.
Credit Unions can help build a bright economic future, WOCCU Conference Keynoter and former Mexican President Vicente Fox said, in advance of his presentation in Barcelona in July. The CU champion believes cooperatives will play a critical role in creating a stronger economic future.
“It’s time to recompose, re-energize and reshape the global financial system to take on its proper role in serving people,” said Fox, currently co-president of Centrist Democrat International, a global coalition of more than 100 Christian Democrat parties.
“We came into the current economic situation after experiencing our best decade in terms of reducing global poverty. Like surgery, we have to become very focused on solving the right problems as we emerge from the crisis.”
His optimism is tempered by the realization that large commercial banks had failed to reach marginalized populations even prior to the economic crisis to which many of them contributed. Financial cooperatives provide the necessary complement in serving millions of people, especially the rural poor, and will be critical in expanding those services, he said.
The former Mexican president knows firsthand the challenge such a charge imposes. When he was elected in 2000, the Mexican economic system was broken. Financial cooperatives were characterized by corruption and bankruptcy.
What opened his mind to CUs?
A meeting in California with the Grameen Bank head Muhammad Yunus, who won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work serving the poor. He said he fell in love with the financial cooperative system as a result of the meeting.
Fox helped revitalize the Mexican rapidly growing Credit union system with assistance from WOCCU and various U.S. credit union leagues and institutions. During the process, Fox learned the importance of proper financial institution oversight, a lack of which he said contributed to the current economic crisis. He also became further convinced of the critical role cooperatives play in serving the poor, and he now lobbies whenever possible in support of cooperative roles within the global financial system.
“If I could speak to the [Group of 20] nations, my most passionate recommendation would be that, in order to increase growth and prosperity among the poor, cooperative financial systems must be considered at the same levels as the banking system,“ Fox said. “But they must be governed with rules and oversight appropriate to their cooperative natures.”
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