ORLANDO, Fla.-Social lending through peer-to-peer websites could make up as much as 10% of all retail lending in just two years thanks to changes in the way individuals make decisions and gaps in conventional practices, one industry expert contends.

WASHINGTON-In a downsizing employment market, where the Department of Labor reports the loss of 200,000 jobs in the financial industry between December 2006 and October 2008, the nation's credit unions continue to add staff, according to Callahan & Associates.

DALLAS-Claiming to provide "Certainty in uncertain times," Hyundai Motor America is allowing consumers who purchase or lease a new Hyundai to return the vehicle and walk away from the loan if they lose their income within one year after purchase.

SALT LAKE CITY-Businesses looking for ways to increase sales and profits often overlook a critical component: employee engagement.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.-Seventy-five percent of financial executives in North America say economic conditions in their industry are worse or far worse than they were six months ago, nearly a third expect conditions to get even worse, and more than half missed their revenue number for the current quarter, according to a Performance and Planning poll released by Adaptive Planning and the Business Performance Management (BPM) Forum. The study's authors say it points to continued concerns about business conditions over the next six months, identifies a significant lack of confidence in executives' abilities to hit future financial plans, and highlights the need for better and more frequent planning and forecasting to successfully manage through the economic downturn.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.-In this issue Credit Union Journal is proud to present a tribute to the 100th Anniversary of Credit Unions in the United States. Subscribers to the Journal will find all of the information and reporting featured in this issue has been archived at www.cujournal.com. That information can be used in educating new employees, for instance, and in other training.

MADISON, Wis.-It is no small measure of how the country has changed that it would be hard to imagine today an American president coming to Madison, Wis. to dedicate the opening of a new CUNA headquarters and laying the cornerstone. But that is precisely what happened on May 14, 1950, and it led to the famous photo of a beaming President Truman with silver trowel. An identical trowel was also made for the Prime Minister St. Laurent of Canada, who declined to attend.

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif.- Arrowhead CU will close four branches effective Feb. 7, the $1-billion CU said.

WASHINGTON-Credit unions often don't think first and foremost of themselves as cooperatives, even though they represent the largest segment of the cooperative industry in the country. The U.S. has a long history of cooperative-based institutions:

Another of the credit union pioneers whose work in organizing CUs in the first half of the 20th century is often overlooked. Tom Doig was working for the Post Office in 1923 when he became involved in helping to organize Minneapolis Postal Employees CU, the first in the state. In 1925 he helped to get CU legislation passed in the state, in addition to helping organize the Minnesota CU League, recognized as the first self-sustaining league in the U.S.

Among the few women active in the formulative years of credit unions, Dora Maxwell joined the board of the New York State Credit Union League in 1921. By 1931 she had become a credit union organizer for the Credit Union National Extension Bureau, the forefunner of CUNA, and was among those to sign the original CUNA Constitution in Estes Park, Colo. in 1934. In 1945, Maxwell was credited with what may be a record for credit unions, helping to organize 120 credit unions in New York City over five months.

Louise McCarren Herring (1909-1987) is sometimes called the "Mother of Credit Unions" in the United States. Born in Ohio, Herring was in attendance at the organizational meeting for CUNA in Estes Park, Colo., in 1934. Herring is credited with helping to found more than 500 credit unions, along with the National Deposit Guaranty Corp. (today known as American Share Insurance in Dublin, Ohio), and the Ohio Credit Union League. For many years she also worked at KEMBA (Kroger Employees Mutual Benefit Association) CU in Cincinnati. CUNA has named its Award for Philosophy in Action after Herring.

While perhaps better known as the first chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Pierre Jay (1892-1949) was the Banking Commissioner in Massachusetts at the time the state became the first to pass a credit union act in 1909. A contemporary and friend of Edward Filene, Jay helped to organize public hearings that would play a role in creating that legislation. Jay had previously studied efforts by groups of employees to start their own, informal savings and loan associations, but those foundered due to a lack of a legal basis. He had also studied the European model of "people's banks."

With the financial backing of Edward Filene, Roy Bergengren, originally a proverty lawyer, began in 1921 to travel the country charged with getting state credit union acts passed. At the time of his hiring to lead the Credit Union National Extension Bureau there were just 199 credit unions in the U.S., and Bergengren would spend the next 13 years traveling by train and automobile around the country. His reputation for being energetic and idealistic served Bergengren well in the role, but he often knocked heads with the more pragmatic Filene.

Edward Filene (1860-1937). There may be no better-known American credit union pioneer than Edward Filene, whose lifelong devotion to social issues and justice led him to commit significant time and money to help found credit unions. Filene expanded an apparel store founded by his father, a German immigrant, into a thriving Department store in Boston and later a chain of stores.

Gabriel-Alphonse Desjardins (1854-1920) played a critical role in importing credit unions from Canada into the United States. He worked as a journalist early in his career, but it was while working as a stenographer in Canada's House of Commons (a position he held from 1892 to 1917) that he first began hearing about the problem of usury, which he then spent three years carefully researching while corresponding with founders of financial cooperatives and credit movements in Europe.

Of the pioneers of the credit union concept, Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen (1818-1888) remains among the best known, in part due to the thousands of Raiffeisenbanks that exist in Europe and even the U.S. today. Born in what today is Hamm, Germany, Raiffeisen was mayor of several towns, including Weyerbusch and Flammersfeld, in the 1840s at the same time famine was affecting much of the country. The idea of cooperative self-help came to him as he watched local farmers who had fallen victim to loan sharks, and he responded with a cooperative lending association, essentially the first credit union.

LANSING, Mich.-General Motors' recent 0% financing offer should not surprise credit unions participating in the Invest in America program - in fact, CUs should expect financing competition from all of the Big 3 throughout 2009.

Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch (1808-1883) was a German economist and contemporary to Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen, both of whom worked to develop different models for financial cooperatives. Schulze-Delitzsch was actually born Herman Schulze, with the Delitzsh added in 1848 to distinguish him from other Schulzes; Delitzsch was the name of the town in which he was born.

MADISON, Wis.-Throughout their history, credit unions have developed a reputation as conservative institutions, but in many ways have been progressive, leading-edge pioneers.