The NCUA seems to be the Big Bopper these days, exhibiting all kinds of gyrations from the agency's partial release of the Clayton reports to the advancing of Debbie Matz' nomination and the NCUA Board meeting last week.

So, the NCUA finally decided to release the Clayton reports on U.S. Central and WesCorp but only to credit unions. In part that seems fair because they're ultimately the ones paying the bill. However, based on anecdotal evidence, as in our page 1 story, the average natural person credit union ironically isn't interested in looking at them. Quite believably, they have more important things to do than study ancient history.

Credit Union Times Correspondent Heather Anderson worked her sources to provide readers a glimpse at the reports so you don't have to sift through the pages. Still, even the reports provided to credit unions are heavily redacted. What is in the report is that U.S. Central, undoubtedly due to a number of internal and external pressures, entrenched itself in subprime securities to the tune of 75% of it's portfolio, and another 10% in securities backed by subordinated loans, such as second liens and home equities, many of which are worth bupkis after the bursting of the housing bubble.