Fed offers up a first peek at Bear Stearns assets

'The Federal Reserve revealed last week that a large portion of the $30 billion in Bear Stearns assets assumed by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in its bid to stop a run on the beleaguered investment bank is composed of mortgage-backed securities. But it’s still unclear how risky those securities are—and to what degree the Fed has taken on additional counterparty risk from what it described as “related hedges” within the illiquid Bear portfolio'