Wot no TALF?

I have been surprised at the slow takeup of the TALF. It looked to me like a license to print money. As Zero Hedge points out, less than $30B has been allocated to a program with a trillion dollar capacity.

Part of my surprise is that to be eligible for the TALF (at the moment at least - this will probably change) a security needs to be AAA rated. And S&P are on the downgrade war path. As Calculated Risk reports, quoting S&P, approximately 25%, 60%, and 90% of the most senior tranches (by count) within the 2005, 2006, and 2007 vintages [of CMBS}, respectively, may be downgraded. So you would have thought that people would have rushed to throw things into the TALF before they became ineligible.

Bloomberg suggests that the TALF, and its brother the PPIP, is stalling. They seem to have a point.