Joanna
----- Original Message -----
Pretty correct, from my experience. A big CU failed in South Florida a few years back. They'd been investing in subprime CDOs, actually. Another few failed in FL and out west - they had large member business ADC loan exposure to projects that stalled at the acquisition phase. Just browse the NCUA news center and marvel at the number of CUs placed into conservatorship or acquired by other CUs in NCUA-facilitated firesales
I've seen stats saying 2/3s of credit unions don't have any meaningful member loans, and that the dollar majority of all CU business loans is simple syndicate participation by the very largest of CUs.
These guys largely fail on their own terms (lack of scale/competence - looking at one of these recent failures, I see it had 429 members and $1.3MM in asssets; how the hell can you even keep the lights on?) or quickly grow into facsimilies of the big boys.
Oh, and the NCUA's being pushed to allow greater use of derivatives to moderate interest rate risk as we speak. ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk