Does peer-to-peer lending work?
Back in 2007, it took little more than a steady pulse to get a loan, albeit a sub-prime one, from credit officers eager to push loans out the door. Now that the real estate bubble has 
gone bust, a steady job and 20 percent down is scarcely enough to persuade banks to lay out for a mortgage, home repairs, or anything else. To fill this financing gap, an increasing number of borrowers are turning to “peer to peer” networks that connect individual borrowers directly to lenders, cutting out the banking middleman. These networks have now financed nearly a half a billion dollars in lending. This is still a long way from the $931 billion in loans and leases that Bank of America had on its balance sheet in 2008, but it’s growing rapidly. Peer-to-peer lenders describe themselves as a solution to many of the banking sector’s current weaknesses. Read more:
Technorati Tags: Prosper, Enrichetta Ravina, Devin Pope, Justin Sydnor, Lending Club, Ray Fisman, peer-to-peer lending, NCET, Nevada’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology
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