Gillian Tett has an intriguing little piece in today’s Financial Times, in which she reports on the first public valuation of particular structured credit instruments.

The odd bit (and theories by those that may have insight are welcome) is that JP Morgan apparently elected to make these prices public. JPM needed to value the securities for a court filing; perhaps it decided it had nothing to lose by sharing its pricing and thought it might encourage other banks to similarly disclose value estimates in legal cases in the hopes of encouraging more transparency.

But as the article makes clear, the markdowns from face value, even of the top rated instruments, were considerable.

From the Financial Times: