Pooling Our Money To Start Businesses: Who Do You Really Trust?

The answer to the economic crisis in depressed communities is a simple formula of cooperation that every successful ethnic group has followed: pool your money, finance someone's business venture, spend money with that business to enable it to grow and hire employees, then repeat the same formula for someone else's business venture. Eventually, a thriving community develops where money circulates among the residents who also own the businesses and employ each other as they provide the goods and services they need. It's a simple formula but it requires one ingredient that is too often lacking in chronically economically depressed communities: trust. Who do we trust enough to give money to, believing it will be used to build a business that can benefit the community? Who do we believe will reinvest once they have achieved success? Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan has promoted a "three year economic program" that some supporters believe provides an organized structure for community economic development that can be highly successful. Are residents of neighborhoods sorely in need of development willing to participate? Would you?