ECB ABS Data Warehouse: So much for ensuring independent, fair, open and market-driven selection process

What do you think the ECB meant when it wrote

The Eurosystem is fully committed to ensuring an independent, fair, open and market-driven selection process in relation to the warehouse constructor and oversight of the Data Warehouse.

Sounds like the Eurosystem intended that every aspect of the selection process should be made available to all structured finance market participants by being fully disclosed over the Internet.  This of course would include issues like public disclosure of conflicts of interest and showing actual proven domain expertise in designing the supporting information system and the data warehouse.

If this is what the Eurosystem intended, why has the Eurosystem not publicly distanced itself from the Market Group?

The Market Group's selection process is the very definition of hiding under the cloak of opacity.

• Its members' names are only available on a confidential basis.  [Hiding the names of the members does not mean eliminating the European Commission concern over how the member's conflicts of interest influence the selection process, design, development and operation of the data warehouse.]

• Exactly what they would like built and therefore the criteria that it will use to select the warehouse constructor and oversight of the data warehouse is secret.

This does not look like an independent, fair, open and market-driven selection process.  It looks like a beauty contest being conducted behind closed doors where the winner, most likely BlackRock [which sits on the ABS technical working group advising the ECB], has already been predetermined.

But a result like this is not unexpected given that the Eurosystem is acting in a way that shows it is completely insensitive to the European Commission's concerns regarding financial information monopolies and conflicts of interest.