As credit union management and boards learn more about the amount of toxic assets in corporate and natural person credit unions, their conclusion about assessments changes from "something we have to live with" to "we can't live with that."

Becoming better informed has not been easy because credit union managements have been frustrated by an opaque process and its uncertain outcome. Focused primarily on running a financial institution, many CUs have given up trying to understand. Further frustrating management is the fact that assessments will not be announced until September. Thus, healthy credit unions have to wait to see how much it will cost them to pay for the mistakes of others. Meanwhile, the hope that the economy experiences a V-shaped recovery leading to a marked improvement in damaged assets is fading. Years from now, the final tally will be known, but it will be too late.

In May 2009, the Federal Reserve Board and the NCUA completed their respective Treasury Supervisory Capital Assessment stress tests. The Fed publicly released its analysis and discussed it with the banks. The NCUA did not release its stress test (nor was US Central's 2008 financial report released) until September 2009. (I spoke at five credit union conferences in the second half of 2009 and asked approximately 800 attendees if anyone had heard of the CU stress test. Three had heard of it.)