On Friday I wrote that I doubted that credit unions were going to be able to provide a painless substitute for payday loans. Felix Salmon has responded at length, making three core arguments: 1.  Credit unions already pay their overhead with current operations, so adding on a payday lending service should give them a cost advantage over payday lenders 2.  Credit unions have a very low cost of funds, particularly in today's environment, where savings accounts might as well be ...

President Obama is expected to unveil his jobs package this week. In considering provisions that would promote job growth, we hope that the president will recognize one important solution that would not cost taxpayers one cent and would help small businesses and create jobs: raising the arbitrary member business lending cap on credit unions. Currently, credit union member business loans are arbitrarily limited by law to 12.25 percent of assets.