New York
With its supporting pillars falling one after another, Wall Street was in panic mode last week. From bankers to push-cart vendors, much of the city has been trying to cope with chaos. But there will always be winners amid such despair - and Mashi Blech might be one of them.
Ms Blech runs two bank branches in New York, with the first opening at the end of 2006 and the second this April. They have both grown very quickly - thanks in part to the economic downturn - and now she is planning to open a third.
She is not a traditional banker, though. What her customers deposit and withdraw is not cash, but time.
Based on a concept first raised in the US in the 1980s, TimeBank is an innovative form of volunteerism based on the structure of a commercial bank. Bank members with different skills provide services to one another free of charge. The time that one person spends providing a service is credited to their account, then used to obtain the services of another member.
The idea has emerged in different forms around the world. Today, there are 300 TimeBanks in 26 countries. But in New York, one of the five cities in the US where the original experiment took place, TimeBank didn't begin to get traction until Ms Blech set up her first branch in Washington Heights.
In 18 months, the branch quickly attracted more than 400 members. The second branch, opened to cover Manhattan's Lower Eastside and Chinatown, already has more than 80 members.
