In a surprising move, the FRBNY has just released the holdings of Maiden Lane I, II and III. Here is what the Fed is saying about this development:

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York today announced that it has expanded the information that it makes available to the public related to the Maiden Lane portfolios. The new information includes nearly all of the holdings of Maiden Lane LLC (ML)—with the exception of residential whole loans as that would violate individual borrowers’ privacy—and all of the holdings of Maiden Lane II LLC (MLII) and Maiden Lane III LLC (ML III). The additional information includes the CUSIP number, descriptor, and the current principal balance or notional amount outstanding for all of the positions in each of three Maiden Lane portfolios. The Federal Reserve recognizes the importance of transparency to its financial stability efforts and will continue to review disclosure practices with the goal of making additional information publicly available when possible. The release of this information today comes after reaching agreement on issues of confidentiality with JPMorgan Chase with respect to the assets of ML and the American International Group, Inc. (AIG) with respect to ML II and ML III.

As a reminder:

ML was formed to facilitate the merger of The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc. and JPMorgan Chase. The New York Fed extended credit to ML to acquire certain assets of Bear Stearns.ML II and ML III were formed to facilitate the restructuring of the government’s financial support to AIG. The New York Fed extended credit to ML II to purchase residential mortgage-backed securities from the securities lending portfolio of several regulated U.S. insurance subsidiaries of AIG. The New York Fed extended credit to ML III to purchase multi-sector collateralized debt obligations from certain counterparties of AIG Financial Products Corp.

Some preliminary observations:

ML 1, in addition to holding a boatload of CDOs, has quite a few Residential whole loans, a variety of single names CDS, of which the bulk is CMBX, AMBAC, MBIA, PMI, CDS on Commercial Real Estate, CDS on Munis, CDS on non-agency RMBS, CDS on Non-residential ABS, some treasuries, and just under $3 billion in Interest Rate Swaps.

ML 2, as noted, contains $35 billion of Non-Agency MBS. It also contains $280 million in cash, held with a Goldman Sachs account. (GOLDMAN SACHS FIN SQ GOVT FS)

ML 3 consists of a variety of CDOs whose notional value is given as $56 billion. Once again, the Fed parks its cash of $383 million in this account with Goldman Sachs.

We will dig through these in detail shortly.

Full listing of assets:

ML 1

ML 2

ML 3