Principles of cooperative democracy and interaction were adequate to the purposes for which people joined credit unions. The uniqueness of credit unions is that they put together the principles and benefits of financial cooperatives, consumer cooperatives and mutual aid funds, born once by trade unions. Over 30% of the assets of credit unions are investments in government securities, certificates of deposit of banks and savings loan associations, as well as in the parent credit unions, and other risk-free investments. As of the January 1, 2012 the national associations and confederations unite more than 196 million members participating in the 51,013 credit unions in 100 countries. Until the mid-XX century, credit unions in the United States had little assets that did not exceed, as a rule, 100 thousand dollars Historically, credit unions have grown from the experience of credit cooperatives, but they took the experience of organizations of mutual aid of citizens by moving methods of social self-protection from labor and toward consumption. In some cases, the initiators of credit unions can be trade unions, associations such as social support centers and others. U.S. credit unions have another significant difference from the credit cooperatives of farmers: the first have major proportion of short-term loans, the second - long and mostly in real estate.