Citation on the Credit Unions that were run by real criminals please.
As I recall, when the S&L crisis hit back in the 70s (what I think of as the First Mortgage crisis), the credit unions were in the best shape in terms of reserves. When The Fed dissolved the S&Ls they essentially threw the CUs in with the banks to mitigate the reserves hit the banks would otherwise have had to take. Up until that point the CUs were running the way people THINK banks should run - keeping sufficient reserves so they would never have to go into bankruptcy even if several of their large depositors did in a short period of time.