Ben Bernanke and the Governors of the Federal Reserve Board are the proud owners of a shopping mall in Oklahoma:
Ben Bernanke, as Federal Reserve Board chairman, is, in fact, the landlord of Crossroads Mall in Oklahoma City.
Maybe you missed that in the complicated saga of Crossroads Mall, which is listed for sale by Price Edwards & Co. The asking price for the mostly vacant property: $24 million.
Price Edwards is listing the mall for mall owner Maiden Lane LLC, an entity of Maiden Lane Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities Trust. It wound up with the mall after Arkansas-based Midwest Mall Properties LLC lost it to foreclosure late last year.
Maiden Lane is a “special purpose vehicle” created in April 2008 by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to facilitate the merger of Bear Stearns Cos. Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Maiden Lane owns Crossroads Mall because former owner Macerich Co. refinanced $61.2 million with Bear Stearns in 2006. But since Maiden Lane is a creature of the Federal Reserve, it was the Fed that took title when Maiden Lane paid $11.24 million for the property at a sheriff’s sale April 30.
Price Edwards, citing a confidentiality agreement, declined to comment.
Reuters columnist Matthew Goldstein reported Oct. 7 that the Fed is in court in New York trying to recoup its losses on Crossroads from former owners, arguing that they signed a personal loan guarantee with Bear Stearns.
Goldstein called Bernanke “a reluctant landlord.”
“This is not what the Fed bargained for when it assumed some of Bear’s worst assets to induce JPMorgan Chase to buy the teetering Wall Street bank,” he wrote. “But it’s the inevitable outcome of taking on a distressed portfolio that includes $8.5 billion in commercial mortgages, hotel chains and office complexes.”
Hello Chairman Bernanke ?
Victoria’s Secret is on line three, they’re having a problem with the lights.
