Category Archives: Coops

2012 Revisited

Crystal Ball

In “The World Will Not End & Other Predictions for 2012, here, I wrote:

  1. Apple and IBM will continue to thrive. Microsoft will grow, slightly. Dell and HP will thrash. A share of Apple, which sold for $11 in December, 2001, and $380 in Dec. 2011, will sell for $480 in Dec. 2012.” (Mostly Correct, except Apple did better than I expected.)
  2. The Price of oil will be at $150 to $170 per barrel in Dec., 2012. The price of gasoline will hit $6.00 per gallon in NYC and California.” (Wrong)
  3. There will be another two or three tragic accidents in China. 20,000 people will die. (The number of accidents was underestimate. Their magnitude was overestimated – however … )
  4. There will be a disaster at a nuclear power plant in India, Pakistan, Russia, China, or North Korea. (Wrong)
  5. Wal-Mart will stop growing. Credit Unions, insurance co-ops and Food co-ops, however, will grow 10% to 25%. (Wrong on WalMart, right on Credit Unions, altho the numbers were off.)
  6. The amount of wind and solar energy deployed in the United States will continue to dramatically increase. (Right. Very Right!)
  7. The government of Bashar Al Assad will fall. (Wrong – but there’s still time.)
  8. Foreclosures will continue in the United States. (sadly, true, but not as bad as it could have been – thanks to Obama)
  9. Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio will resign. Calls for Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from matters involving his wife’s clients will become louder, but Justice Thomas will ignore them. A prominent politician who says “Marriage is between a man and a woman,” or her husband, will be “outed” as gay. President Obama will be re-elected.” (Right on Obama and the American voter. Wrong on Arpaio)
  10. The authors of Vapor Trails will not win a Nobel Prize for literature. They will not win a “MacArthur Genius Award.” Nor will I despite my work on this blog or “Sunbathing in Siberia” and the XBColdFingers project. (Right, tho I would have like to have been wrong on this one.)

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Co-Ops 102: Credit Unions

“Not for profit, not for charity, but for service.”

– Credit Union motto

“The National Bank at a profit sells road maps for the soul to the old folks home and the college.”

–   Bob Dylan, “Tombstone Blues

Graph showing deposits of top 20 credit unions and top four banks in the US

Back in 2010, over 9,000 credit unions in the United States had over $500 Billion in deposits. In November, 2011, the top 20 credit unions had $149 Billion in deposits, while Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citibank, the four largest U.S. banks, had over $4.0 trillion. However, as of the end of the first quarter, 2012, credit unions had over $1.0 trillion in deposits – their deposits doubled since 2010.  What happened?

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Co-Ops 101: More than Brown Rice, Granola, & Honey

When they think of cooperatives, Americans may think of hippies and brown rice, granola, and food co-ops like the Brattleboro Food Co-op, in Vermont, and the Flatbush Food Coop, in Brooklyn, New York. Israelis tend to think first of Kibbutzim and Moshavim, the collective farms of the early days of the Yishuv and the State of Israel that have evolved into corporations.  Eastern Europeans may think of the Kolhoz, the collective farms of the failed Soviet state.

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