Same Sex Marriages...

Let's open a can...

In case you missed it, North Carolinians had a chance a few years back to vote on a constitutional amendment which limited marriage to only the union of one man and one woman.  

Although that limitation was already the law in North Carolina, some folks felt that amending the NC Constitution would make the will of the people clearer.  There was much heated debate leading up to the vote, with both sides putting forth "take no prisioners" rhetoric.  It was one of those "'fer it or agin it" type propositions.  And, the " 'fer its" carried the day by a 60% to 40% margin!

During the lengthy debate, I thought one comment stood out above all others regarding the amendment:  "Not sure why gay folks should receive special treatment.  They should be required to get married just like the rest of us!"

Say no more!!!  But, if you want to see a real uproar in NC on the marriage issue, just wait until someone tries to pass an amendment which prohibits us from...

From the Field...

!!!

"It never seizes to amaze me...."

[Carpe seizure!]

Soviet Propaganda....

Once spent an extended number of years going to college to obtain an undergraduate degree in Russian History.  There were, at the time, several seemingly logical reasons for this choice of degrees.... one of which was not that I was a "student athlete".  The choice was mostly influenced by an academic advisor who kept suggesting "Just choose something!" and parental funders who had begun using phrases like "Grow up!" and were increasingly late with their "support checks".

Being so aggressively encouraged in my academic endeavors,  looked around earnestly for the quickest way out and found the Russians!  After all I liked to socialize and already had extensive non-credit hours in partying, so studying "the Socialist Party" seemed the least demanding path of resistance.  

Another "party" animal?

Within a decade, I was awarded a degree in history - on a split decision by the Trustees, reached only after promised assurances from the recipient, never to practice in North Carolina or any contiguous state.  Thought that was a sound bargain for all concerned; and in exchange, the Trustees agreed to "round upward" my grade point average to the minimum "2.00000000000"! Still to this day believe any grade point average above 2.0 but less than Phi Beta Kappa is a waste of "extra-curricular opportunities" - socialist or otherwise.

Obviously many, many people were thrilled with my graduation; a far greater number were shocked and surprised - and remain so to this very day.


But I did learn a few things.....

Wicked Wits...

Was out of the office most of the day. When I returned I found this on my desk...

Which just goes to show that....

Flower Plots...

Of course, I'm not recommending that you actually do anything; we each are responsible for our own actions, our own decisions, our own choices in life.  No matter what you do; it's not my fault, but...

Have you ever considered anonymously sending one of your friends or co-workers a dozen - passionately red - roses to the office, with a card that simply says: "Last night was wonderful!  Love, Sweetness"...

The Fatal Conceit....The OTR... And "Self-Serving Crazy Talk"!

Ms. Lucy Ito, CEO NASCUS

ALRIGHT LUCY ITO!  SINCE NAFCU's DAN BERGER HAS "GROWN STRANGELY DISTANT" OF LATE...

AS CEO OF NASCUS WILL YOU SUPPORT A FAIR ALLOCATION OF THE NCUSIF COSTS AMONG ALL CREDIT UNIONS - REGARDLESS OF CHARTER? IF SO, HOW SO?


Frederick Hayek was  selected for the Nobel Economics Prize in 1974. Conservative, pragmatic, perhaps libertarian in his views on free markets and governments, Hayek was most noted for his book "The Road to Serfdom" which was published shortly after WWII.

Robust Economic Wizards !!!

The WSJ recently ran an op-ed piece by Donald  Boudreaux and Todd Zywicki which included several of Hayek's observations, including several from another work "Fatal Conceit", on the continued hubris of robusterians and other "central planners" [aka - "independent agencies"] - self-assured of their unique abilities to manage the economy and financial markets.  

True fools never have any doubts !

Foolish? 
Doubtless!

Three Hayek quotes presented in the Boudreaux/Zywicki op-ed should give us all pause as we await yet another ill-fated round of NCUA "irregularity", redacted OTR transparency, "Soviet era" capital/stress testing gobbledygook, and a seemingly endless mosaic of clumsy and clueless, fatal conceits from the "Hazards of Duke". 

Hayek said in accepting the Nobel Prize that he was concerned that elevating economics to a science would create a ....  ""pretense of knowledge" - the idea that anyone could know enough to engineer society successfully."  The first NCUA RBC rule was definitely pretentiousness at its worst - embarrassingly so!  Hayek said:  

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."

Less free?

"What does Hayek recommend?  A little humility. "We shall not grow wiser until we learn that much of what we have done was very foolish."  It was the central lesson of "The Road to Serfdom" that hubris makes us not only poorer but also less free."

Will be interesting to see if credit unions - if you - and NASCUS are willing to fight for honesty and fairness in the OTR discussion, against 
"a pretense of knowledge" which leads by example...

NCUA: Continuing Fiduciary Irregularities With The NCUSIF??? Seeing "RED"...

Mr. Dan Berger, CEO NAFCU

HEY, DAN BERGER! AS CEO OF NAFCU IS THIS FAIR?

WILL YOU AND NAFCU FIGHT FOR FAIRNESS, EVEN IF FEDERAL CHARTERS ARE NOT PAYING THEIR FAIR SHARE?

WE'RE LOOKING FOR....
 NATIONAL LEADERSHIP..... WHERE DO YOU STAND MARTIN LUTHER?

Mr. Rendell Jones, the CFO of the NCUA, recently provided the NCUA Board with a quarterly update on the performance of the cooperative share insurance fund (NCUSIF).

... and fiscally not nice!!!

NCUA has long mismanaged the NCUSIF, through its abuse of the overhead transfer rate (OTR) provision. The OTR provision permits part of the NCUSIF earnings to be used to cover NCUA's ever escalating operating costs.  Milking the NCUSIF weakens its purpose and helps hide NCUA's unjustifiable budget bloat from direct, above-board, public scrutiny.

When the OTR was first introduced around 1984, it was fairly estimated that approximately 25% of the NCUA budget could be attributed to the insurance function.  Under the current regime, that sense of fairness is no longer a major concern and the OTR percentage continues to soar - 59.1% in 2013, 69.2% in 2014, and 71.8% in 2015.  

This is what one should expect when an independent federal agency fully exercises its "independence" - and when Congress appears to have abdicated its oversight responsibilities.

To make all this just a little bit more ridiculous (or dishonest, depending on your view of NCUA's competence), NCUA has willfully used the NCUSIF OTR to not only conceal its run-a-way budgetary mismanagement, but to also overcharge state-chartered credit unions for insurance coverage, to fiscally cripple many state CU regulators, and to unjustly "enhance" the federal CU charter by reducing FCU regulatory fees by almost 20% in the last two years alone.  

Here's how you know "the fix is in"...

Funny Money...The Overhead Transfer Rate (OTR)....Where Are The Trades?

Another "VA-like" problem?

The National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund belongs to credit unions - that's right, the NCUSIF belongs to you! 

The potential mismanagement of the NCUSIF is a concern of long-standing among knowledgeable credit union boards and staff.  Pressure from Mark McWatters and Congress [administering yet another in a series of embarrassing blows in public hearings to the Agency's credibility]

"Serial redactors"!

 has forced NCUA to publish its "secret formulas" and reviews of the OTR process.  As you might suspect, when "the facts" are revealed, NCUA will have yet another "strike" against their increasingly fragile reputation in D.C.

Shouldn't you be asking a few questions?

A Number Of Fools ....

A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.

- Plato


Smaller minds know
 this
 is not true.

Tolerance.....

 "Every religion is good that teaches man to be good".

- Thomas Paine

(The Rights of Man - Pt. II, 1792)




[... and all do!]