At the end of October, I was at the Riverside Church, one of New York’s great centers of social action and charity, for a panel held as part of Columbia's annual Social Enterprise conference.   The gothic setting was an odd match for the panel, but the timing was perfect for the topic: "Transitions in Capital Market Financing for Microfinance Institutions." If there was ever a time for thinking about financial transitions, this is it.

Researchers and financial analysts will spend years trying to understand exactly what happened on Wall Street over the past four weeks.  No one was prepared for the rapid expansion of an economic crisis on such a massive scale. At the Financial Access Initiative offices in New York, however, we have been tracking a different expansion of the global financial system—one that is fueled by the possibility of financial empowerment instead of by risk and irresponsible lending...