Ha-Joon Chang, an economics professor at Cambridge University, says the popularity of microfinance was due to a 'strange alliance' between a finance industry that 'does nasty things to make money, and people who genuinely wanted to help the poor but were against the collective approach'. He says it was successful because it did not threaten the status quo. Ultimately, though, microfinance allows the neoliberal establishment to say it cares about poor people but does not challenge the underlying causes of poverty