The Federal Reserve Board has announced that it had agreed with the Treasury Department that it was appropriate for Treasury to reduce from $20 billion to $4.3 billion the credit protection provided for the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The Board had authorized up to $200 billion in TALF loans, but when the program closed on June 30, 2010, there were $43 billion in loans outstanding.
Any losses on the TALF program would first be absorbed by the accumulated excess of the TALF loan interest payments over the Federal Reserve's cost of funds and then by the TARP funds. To date, the TALF program has experienced no losses and all outstanding TALF loans are well collateralized. The Board continues to see it as highly likely that the accumulated excess interest spread will cover any loan losses that may occur without recourse to the dedicated TARP funds.
See the press release for full details.