Transparency: A test for the cooperative system

“Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

That is the official slogan of The Washington Post, adopted in 2017. The slogan was introduced on the newspaper’s website on February 22, 2017. The phrase was popularized by investigative journalist Bob Woodward, who used it in a 2007 piece criticizing government secrecy.

In September, long-time credit union supporter and reporter Frank Diekmann published an “editorial” on the CUToday website, Why NCUA Should Require Credit Unions to Disclose What They’re Paying for Banks.

Based on years of covering bank purchases, he critiques the absence of meaningful data in many of these transitions. No information is provided, such as the purchase price, that would show how the members’ collective capital is being used to pay off owners of banks. Here is some of his logic:

 

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