Misleading

Is Kiva actually misleading?  Here's another disillusionment victim who thinks so.  And once you get past the fact that this thing is on a site that's about 60% web ads, and the fact that they split up a 492-word piece into two pages so you have to look at all the ads twice, there's still not much of a point.

I was watching one of my favorite channels recently, USA...

Wait, what?  Do people keep lists of their favorite channels?  And if they do, don't they have the sense to keep that fact to themselves?

...when the commercial for Character Approval came on. This is USA's program to honor innovators, artists, and anyone who is trying to bring fresh ideas to the world. I like the idea of this program but I think USA should be a little more careful about who they claim to be a character. 

Well, yeah.  They might find themselves sliding down peoples' favorite channels lists.  I mean, not mine.  After Silk Stalkings, they can do whatever they want and still make my top five.  But other peoples'. (By the way, when I copy/pasted that bit of concentrated inanity, it stuck a damn web ad in my blog.  So we know this guy's doing it for the right reasons at least.)

My introduction to Kiva.org was made via the USA channel...

I'm starting to feel sorry for this guy.  He can't believe the USA channel would do this to him.  It's just heartbreaking.  Although he is pretending his name's "Vincent Van Noir," so maybe I don't feel sorry for him.

...and like many people I thought, "Wow! What a great way to help poor people." [He's a mind-reader, too.] So I went to the Kiva website and started nosing around and quickly became dismayed and angry at what I found. Kiva claims to be a middleman, so to speak, between poor people around the world and lenders. But this is not exactly true.

Vince is actually about to detail in what ways this is exactly true.  Let's watch together.

First, you, give your money to Kiva and then Kiva gives your money to a micro lender. This person or agency then sets up a loan using your money for the intended recipient.

Is there a term for someone who does that?  Taking money from one party and funneling it to another?  Oh yeah - middleman!  I don't know if that's a world record for self-contradiction, but it ain't bad.

Now this loan, because it is a micro loan, charges the recipient as high as 35% interest (Kiva, 2010). 

When you're arguing with someone, and he's making his case so badly that you have to step in and help him, that's a situation where a better man than I am would back off and go do something else.  But I can't possibly be a better man than I am.  Mr. "Van Noir," people aren't so upset about the 35% interest rate.  They're upset about the 60+% interest rates.  I see from your little endnote there that you did scrupulous research, but I can see how you'd miss this.  You'd have to do . . . I don't know, a Google search or something to find that out.  Arcane stuff.

Vinny doesn't mention any of the possible explanations for these interest rates.  I assume that, say, the cost of doing business in countries with a difficult business environment or the short terms of the loans have been considered and rejected so soundly that he didn't feel them worth mentioning.

What really burns me up is that Kiva acts like it is doing the world a service by aiding poor people in climbing out of poverty. Arguably this organization might have helped many of these people with loans but when you have nothing, anything is better (and that 25% interest payment seems alright.) Kiva might think it is helping people but the truth is that the people receiving these loans have to pay back large amounts of interest and the use of micro lending might only be sinking these individuals further into a new form of poverty, known well to many Americans as credit debt.

Those are some pretty bold statements. His idea's about the "truth" of the microfinance is idiosyncratic, at least. Seems like the kind of thing you might want to back up with facts.

Unless, that is, you're a mercenary hack trying to squeeze out (almost) 500 words so that your mercenary hack bosses can coat it in lucrative advertisements and try to trick people into thinking it's worth reading.

Not only are Vin's arguments incoherent, silly, and completely undefended, nothing mentioned in this article is a surprise to anyone who's done even the most cursory investigation of Kiva or microfinance in general, which should be everyone who's committed money to such a project.