WASHINGTON - Mark Wolff well remembers just when he learned what CUNA & Affiliates' Governmental Affair Conference (GAC) really meant. The lesson had little to do with the usual stellar lineup of Congressional and government speakers, moments of historic significance to the credit union movement, delegate trips to Capitol Hill, or the fact that Wolff, CUNA's senior vice president of communications, had been running the GAC for a number of years.

SECU Offering New Mutual Funds

DEARBORN, Mich. - Candidates endorsed by DFCU Owners United failed to unseat three DFCU Financial incumbent candidates at the CU's annual meeting.

LAS VEGAS - One company believes it has a way to raise the IQ of front-line staff.

WASHINGTON - NCUA Vice Chairman Rodney Hood, who sits on the board of NeighborWorks America, wants homeowners in hurricane-stricken New Orleans and elsewhere to know that the organization is making a special counseling service available to those individuals who are being faced with foreclosure.

MADISON - Forced financial counseling is a fool's errand for any income or educational level. This was a lesson learned during my early days at CUNA, when it was a small trade association located at Filene House on Madison's East side. Vera, an employee of CUNA Credit Union, would visit Filene House twice a week to take deposits and provide withdrawals. Vera and her briefcase were the credit union to the employees, just like those found in the movement's early history.

MARCH

SAN DIMAS, Calif. - WesCorp has unveiled an employee-based political action committee.

WASHINGTON - With a somewhat homogenous field of membership, Pan American Health Organization and World Health Organization Federal Credit Union (PAHO/WHO FCU), doesn't have to be all things to all people-but it does have to be just about everywhere in the world.

Rate Compression Still Squeezing CU Movement

MADISON, Wis. - As part of the World Council of Credit Unions' Cooperative Development Program, 27 CU reps from the Mwalimu SACCO completed a 10-day intensive training program on HIV/AIDS prevention in Nairobi, Kenya.

The CU Journal recently reported on the changing demands on CIOs. I'm one of them. How do you see that role changing, and what does your panel primarily expect and want from CIOs/IT staff at client credit unions?

KENSINGTON, Md. - Editor's Note: This story appeared incorrectly in the Credit Union Journal's Feb. 12 issue. It appears in its complete form here.

ST. PAUL, Minn. - US Federal Credit Union has joined forces with two area not-for-profits to open a new type of financial center aimed at an underserved population.

WASHINGTON - The consumer savings rate continues to sink into territory not seen since the Great Depression. The Commerce Dept. is reporting that the savings rate for all of 2006 was a negative 1%, meaning that overall consumers were dipping into savings or increasing their borrowing during the year.

BEDFORD, Mass. - Look for some "pretty scary" security threats to blow in this year, in the form of do-it-yourself kits that allow amateurs to launch man-in-the-middle attacks, and invisible Trojan computer viruses.

Int'l Remittance Volume Surges

SAN FRANCISCO - Who is most vulnerable to ID fraud? It may be the group you least expect.

INDIAN WELLS, Calif. - The mortgage lending industry must change to meet new challenges, specifically the hundreds of thousands of families flocking to the U.S. who have money and have good jobs, but do not speak English and do not understand the American financial system, so they rent when they could buy, according to one expert.

LAS VEGAS - If there is one common denominator in what credit unions want from their technology solutions, it is openness.