Working With The Ombudsman On IMCR: "NCUA - It Will Be A Joy..."

For the past two years - up until about 10 am yesterday! - if you had gone to the NCUA website to find out about the Ombudsman position here's what you would have seen:

Kinda hard to read the fine print, but it basically says "We don't know what you're talking about"!

Rep. McHenry ain't
"overjoyed"...

Interestingly, Chair Matz has been touting the Ombudsman to Congress (those unfortunate letters!) as the antidote  to that little "brown shirted" IMCR (individual minimum capital requirement) provision slipped into the proposed rigged-based capital (RBC) rule.  As has frequently been the case with the RBC rule, truth seems well-distanced from fact in much of what NCUA claims.

"We don't know what's wrong,
if you don't tell us."

Is the Ombudsman position really  the independent safety valve which will protect credit unions from the Agency we all have had the joy of watching "operate with such competence, trust and grace" on this RBC rule?  

Well, decide for yourself. You might like to check out what NCUA's own Office of the Inspector General (OIG) said in August, 2012 about the Ombudsman position in this report (pages 25-30 are particularly enlightening!) The OIG report basically says that the "Ombudsman concept" was required by the 1994 Riegle Federal Act, but NCUA still hadn't gotten around to implementing the law correctly by 2012.   As you can tell from the OIG report and the overly-obvious, website snafu; the Agency really takes this Ombudsman stuff seriously.

But what will really put your mind at ease, about the assured fairness, impartiality, and independence of "our protector from all harm," is simply to take a look at the incumbent Ombudsman....

This is
definitely...

... a double
duck !!!

"Ms. Joy Lee is the Ombudsman for NCUA.  In addition to serving as the Ombudsman, Ms. Lee is the Special Assistant to the Executive Director.  Prior to this position, she was the Senior Federal Financial Institutions Council Advisor to the Chairman of NCUA, Debbie Matz."

ARE WE FEELING "SAFE AND SOUND", BOYS AND GIRLS?

("JOY" TO THE WORLD!)