Vice President Al Gore ordered the Small Business Administration to double its loan guarantees to African American applicants by the year 2000. The SBA has already pledged to triple loan guarantees to Latinos over the same period. These loans are guaranteed by taxpayers and are available to applicants who can't get ordinary loans from a bank.

In a related development following the Asian monetary crisis, the Clinton Administration requested a $17 billion increase in the capital base of the International Monetary Fund, a financial body that owes its continued existence to its willingness to extend loans to developing countries, not to any particular success in doing so.

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