Forums: National Credit Union Foundation

Located in the very heart of modern-day Germany, in the province of Hesse, is a small humble town of only 15,000 inhabitants. In the middle of that town stands an imposing old cathedral built in the 12th-14th centuries of reddish stone. Situated in front of that cathedral is the statue of a man in a monk’s garb on a stump of a freshly felled oak, with a huge Saxon ax in his hand. The humble town is Fritzlar, called Gaesmere in ancient times. It is known in Germany as the birthplace of two beginnings: Here began the Christianization of Germany,...

Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, said the Census, which takes place every 10 years, was an expensive and inaccurate way of measuring the number of people in Britain. Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister Instead, the Government is examining different and cheaper ways to count the population more regularly, using existing public and private databases, including credit reference agencies. It will represent a historic shift in the way that information about the nation’s population, religion and social habits is gathered. The suggestion is likely to be approved by Cabinet next week. It will be too late to prevent the...

Several hundred Dallas-area residents gathered Saturday for an all-day brainstorming session about the ballooning national debt. They sweated. They scratched their heads, jotted notes and haggled. They made tough choices and in the end, like Congress itself, many came up short. Frank Reister discussed options with his table Saturday at the AmericaSpeaks town hall meeting on the national debt. Reister thought the choices subtly led people toward protecting entitlement programs. Table 29, for instance, tried earnestly for hours. They got about halfway to the goal of trimming the deficit by $1.2 trillion.

Inquiring minds want to know. Has the White House responded to any requests made by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer to help secure her state's border against illegal immigration and narco-terrorism, like with a couple more OH-58 helicopters or a few unmanned aerial vehicles, more affectionately known in some circles as Predator UAVs? Well, no. "We have had no specific response from the administration on any of our proposals..."

I had the pleasure of attending the Summer Bash that the Republican Jewish Coalition held last night at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. There was a powerful speaking line up that (among others)included talk show host Dennis Praeger, actor-statesman John Voight, Congresswoman Michelle Bachman, (former) Congressman Norm Coleman, and Karl Rove. A very moving evening with some wonderful speeches. If there was one message that seemed to resonate with all the speakers was that the next election may very well be the most important of our generation. My own personal bias was that Karl Rove was the most fascinating person of...

Over the past two years, economic hard times have loomed as large at Washington National Cathedral as the Gothic spires that grace the city's skyline. The cathedral has slashed its budget from $27 to $13 million, outsourcing its gift shop operation and shuttering its popular greenhouse and its continuing education college for clergy. Three rounds of layoffs have reduced the staff from 170 to 70, including, at the end of this month, the cathedral's conservator and the liturgist who oversaw the April memorial service for civil rights pioneer Dorothy Height.

Both the national Democratic and Republican party committees spend about two-thirds of the money they take in on the care and comfort of committee staffs and on efforts to raise more funds, with lavish spending on limousines, expensive hotels, meals and tips, an analysis of the latest financial disclosure data shows.

Controversial real-time event shows how 3 volunteers handle a week in the hole.

The Obama administration is locking up the country's nuclear weapons for all but the most "extreme circumstances," pledging in a new policy not to develop new nuclear weapons and to limit the use of the ones in storage -- even for self defense. The new strategy stops short of declaring the United States will never be the first to launch a nuclear attack. But officials said the goal is to move toward a policy where the "sole purpose" of nuclear weapons is to deter or respond to a nuclear attack. And Obama, in an interview with The New York Times,...

Bloomberg headline: “U.S., U.K. Move Closer to Losing Rating, Moody’s Says.” Watch out. But then again, is this really anything new? Notable quotes: The governments of the two economies must balance bringing down their debt burdens without damaging growth by removing fiscal stimulus too quickly, Pierre Cailleteau, managing director of sovereign risk at Moody’s in London, said in a telephone interview. Under the ratings company’s so-called baseline scenario, the U.S. will spend more on debt service as a percentage of revenue this year than any other top-rated country except the U.K., and will be the biggest spender from 2011 to...