I hate the TALF program.  It is going to come back to bite each and every one of us ….  the taxpayers.  First it was designed to get our securitization market flowing again, presumably to unfreeze the credit markets.  It was to be a mechanism for the Treasury Department to guarantee, with our tax dollars, toxic loans stripped from the Banks’ balance sheets.  It was duplicitous and it was designed to be that way.  Now, in addition to subprime credit cards, subprime auto loans (FRBNY’s words, not mine), student loans, and small business loans, they’ve tagged on Commerical Mortgages.

So I went to the FRBNY’s website to read up on the terms and conditions  and found that the FRBNY has hired a collateral monitor, a company by the name of Trepp LLC.   And I was simply curious to find out if I could find out who really owned Trepp and if it’s involvement is as “arms length” as one would expect it to be.

Here is an interesting interview by CNBC with Tom Fink, senior vice president of Trepp.  I noticed that CNBC never once asked him if there could be any perceived conflict of interest with Trepp accepting this position as “The Feds new Toxic Avenger”.

So, I pose this question to the blogging universe and to our leaders on the Hill and to President Obama: 

How many Commercial Mortgages will Chase Bank be allowed to unload through TALF, a government program that has hired as its collateral monitor  Trepp LLC  whose UK Parent company utilizes, as their stockbroker, a company that is owned 50% by JP Morgan Chase.

Does anyone else see this as a conflict of interest?

Here’s the back up data to this question.  Read it and decide for yourself.  If you think I’m wrong, I’d love to hear you tell me why you think I’m wrong.

 

 

 

 

 

 About PPR

PPR, headquartered in Boston, is an established provider of independent global real estate research and portfolio strategy services to the institutional real estate community. PPR provides views on markets in North America, Europe and Asia and offers expertise in real estate markets, real estate portfolio analysis, mortgage risk, and the design of real estate investment strategies. Clients include commercial banks, insurance companies, Wall Street firms, rating agencies, government agencies, pension funds, investment advisors, real estate investment trusts, and private investors.

Trepp and PPR are each wholly owned by DMG Information, Inc., the business information division of Daily Mail and General Trust, plc (DMGT).

And here’s information on the parent company:  Daily Mail and General Trust , plc (DMGT)

 and their “stockbrokers”

 Stockbrokers
JPMorgan Cazenove Ltd
20 Moorgate
London
EC2 6DA
Great Britain
http://www.cazenove.com/

 

 

Tags: Add new tag, anonymous banker, CMBS, commercial mortgage backed securities, derivatives, FRBNY, FRBNY TALF, JP Morgan Chase, TALF, TARP, toxic assets, Trepp, Trepp LLC

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 18th, 2009 at 8:09 pm and is filed under TALF - The Term Asset Backed Loan Facility. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.