Last week, we looked at the process by which the New York Federal Reserve selected four investment firms to manage its program to purchase $500 billion of mortgage-backed securities, in order to bolster the housing market.

Or at least, we tried to.

A fact sheet on the website of the New York Fed, announcing the details of the program stated that "a competitive request for proposal (RFP) process was employed" to select the four firms -- Blackrock Inc., Goldman Sachs, Wellington Management, and PIMCO. A Fed spokesman declined last week to give TPMmuckraker any information about the value of the contracts or the nature of the firms' successful bids. But he did tell us that he expected to be able to provide us with a copy of the RFP, after it had been inspected by Fed lawyers.

But now things seem to have changed. The spokesman hasn't responded to our followup calls, placed this week, about the RFP. In other words, not only will the Fed not tell us how much its paying the firms to manage our money, it won't even release the document it used to solicit bids for the contract.

As for the firms themselves, they've been just as tight-lipped. As we noted at the time, the first three referred us to the Fed, and PIMCO didn't return our calls at all.

To be clear, there's no evidence that these firms were improperly selected -- though the fact that PIMCO's founder was, as we've reported, loudly calling back in September for the government to launch just such an MBS purchase program does create some interesting optics, at the least.

But don't taxpayers have a right to know some basic details about the process by which these private investment firms -- at least one already the recipient of massive government largesse -- were hired to manage our money? We think so...

So, how much are the four firms hired to manage the Fed's mortgage-backed securities purchase program getting paid for their work, and how did they get the contracts in the first place?

They're not saying.

We called Blackrock Inc., Goldman Sachs, Wellington Management, and PIMCO to ask them about their recently announced contracts to manage a total of $500 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities, on behalf of the Federal Reserve. Spokespeople for the first three firms told us they were referring all questions to the Fed. Representatives for PIMCO -- whose founder said in September that his firm would manage a very similar Treasury program for free, out of patriotic duty -- have not responded to two messages.

A spokesman for the New York Fed told TPMmuckraker he'd get back to us with more information.

"The selection of these managers seems incredibly opaque," Jeffrey Gundlach, the chief investment officer for the invesment firm TCW, and an expert in mortgage-backed securities, told TPMmuckraker.

Indeed, the Fed has so far provided little detailed information on the process by which these firms were selected. In a fact sheet posted on their website, the Fed wrote:

Because of the size and complexity of the agency MBS program, a competitive request for proposal (RFP) process was employed to select four investment managers and a custodian ... The selection criteria were based on the institution's operational capacity, size, overall experience in the MBS market and a competitive fee structure.

We'll keep you posted on what we learn from the Fed...