PayThink

NCUA Chairman Deborah Matz has spent the past few months leading Town Halls across the country and online. Matz has referred to it as a "listening tour." Credit unions have been happy to oblige with an earful.

A recent report makes the assertion that "by 2013, the cost of regulatory compliance and risk management will have priced Tier 3 and Tier 4 financial institutions out of the market." However, this Compliance Tax can be addressed, and I believe the solution is found in technology.

A Gallup Poll conducted last June revealed that only 22% of Americans have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in banks. And they have even less faith in the people who run them.

There are plenty of stories about people changing careers when their jobs in finance disappeared. But according to LinkedIn, the social networking Web site, people who transitioned to other industries were the exception. Most stayed in the financial space.

While the Obama administration has punted into next year any decision on how to reform the housing finance giants, there's no shortage of opinion about what should be done.

As the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and a longtime economics professor at Princeton, there is little doubt Paul Krugman knows more about financial services than most.

Call it a not-so-subtle indicator of the nation's mood-when you land at Washington's Reagan National Airport you are greeted by souvenir stands at which the most prominent t-shirt on display reads, "I love my country, it's the government I'm afraid of."

Your members typically won't have a very good understanding of what title insurance covers or what it costs. Yet title insurance is one of the largest expenses when closing on a purchase or refinance.

The timing of NCUA's "solution" (to the troubled corporate CU system) is somewhat suspect, but at least the trade group hit the nail on the head regarding corporate investing.

Should natural person credit unions continue to support corporate credit unions? A better question may be: can credit unions trust corporate credit unions to operate in their best interest?