Free Republic

About 60 credit unions in the US are experiencing outages because of a ransomware attack on an IT provider the credit unions use, a federal agency said Friday. The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), the agency that insures deposits at federally insured credit unions, said in a statement to CNN that it was “coordinating with affected credit unions” in the wake of the hack. The full extent of the outage and its impact on credit unions was unclear Friday evening. One of the affected credit unions, New York-based Mountain Valley Federal Credit Union, said that technicians from the hacked IT...

Federal regulators need to explain why they’ve granted a perpetually-floundering California credit union that serves organized labor permission to raise money from investors—especially considering those regulators haven’t given the same green light to a strong and growing credit union that serves rural Idahoans. Credit unions are member-owned nonprofits and generally can use only retained earnings for expansion plans. If a credit union wants to grow using secondary capital from investors, it must first seek permission from the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), which is supposed to evaluate the credit union’s stability and financial position before giving the green light. A...

How can you tell if you’re living in a police state? The short answer is that you’re living in a police state when everyone becomes a suspected criminal or terrorist. And if the following report is any indicator, then welcome to the Reich. The Justice Department has ordered bank tellers across America to contact law enforcement if they suspect your cash withdrawal may have something to do with illicit activity. There doesn’t need to be proof, or any sort of red flag indicator – merely suspicion by the bank teller processing your transaction is now enough to have you investigated...

Two years after the peak of the financial crisis, the federal government swooped in to stabilize a crucial part of the credit-union sector battered by losses on subprime mortgages. Regulators announced Friday a rescue of the nation's wholesale credit unions, underpinned by a federal guarantee valued at $30 billion or more. Wholesale unions don't deal with the general public but provide essential back-office services to thousands of other credit unions across the U.S. The majority of retail credit unions are sound, but they are exposed to the losses through the industry's insurance fund. Friday's moves include the seizure of three...

Written Notice for Existing Accounts The Credit Union will make a change in the way it reports your Account balance as part of an aggregate total to the Federal Reserve Bank (FRB). This change will not affect your available balance, dividend earnings on dividend bearing accounts, NCUA insurance, statement or any other feature of your Account. This will allow us to substantially lower our reserve requirement balance at the FRB and increase the amount of funds available for loans and investments, thereby increasing our ability to serve our members. Credit Union Checking, Savings and Money Market Accounts will now be...

February 16, 2009, Alexandria, Va. – The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) placed Center Valley Federal Credit Union of Wheeling, West Virginia, into liquidation Friday, February 13, 2009. The NCUA Asset Management and Assistance Center will issue checks to individuals once they have verified the balances in share accounts in the Center Valley Federal Credit Union. Through the NCUA National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund, credit union members’ deposits are insured to at least $250,000 on regular accounts and $250,000 on certain retirement accounts. NCUA made the decision to liquidate Center Valley Federal Credit Union and discontinue its independent operation...

BY MARK MAREMONT In the latest effort to prop up a sector of the finance industry, federal regulators on Wednesday guaranteed $80 billion in uninsured deposits at the powerful institutions that service the nation's credit unions -- a maneuver that shows how the economic crisis continues to ripple across the U.S. Regulators also injected $1 billion of new capital into the largest of these wholesale credit unions, U.S. Central Federal Credit Union of Lenexa, Kan., after the firm on Wednesday posted an unexpected $1.1 billion loss for 2008. U.S. Central serves essentially as a main clearinghouse for the others in...