5 min readAs they grapple with the credit crunch, many businesses across the country have yet another cash constraint: more than $100 billion tied up in a part of the bond market that shut down last February and that isn’t going to reopen. Vicor Corp. is one of them. The Andover maker of power systems for electronics…
4 min readNearly all the $3.4 trillion in money-market mutual funds is expected to be federally guaranteed for at least the next three months, now that all the major fund providers signed up to participate by a deadline that passed Wednesday. The universal participation means investors won’t have to stay up at night worrying whether their fund…
6 min readFinancial calamities have come in waves during the past two weeks, each one sending another jolt through the U.S. economy. These daily — sometimes hourly — developments have included continued declines in the housing market, government bailouts of troubled financial giants, and the disappearance of venerable Wall Street firms. Suddenly, Americans have had to become…
3 min readWALL STREET TOLD US AUCTION-RATE SECURITIES WERE just like money-market funds but with bigger yields. They also told us money-market funds were just like cash. What’s next? The check’s in the mail? Well, sort of, but it’s from the federal government, not the Street. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Friday played the role of white…
3 min readThe legacy of Henry Blodget may haunt Merrill Lynch & Co Inc MER.N as it negotiates a settlement with regulators for the way it sold auction rate securities to investors. Blodget, you’ll recall, was a Merrill analyst who earlier became the poster boy for the excesses of the Internet era when he was caught publicly…
4 min readSeveral money market funds are losing money as the $3.5 trillion sector that long had been considered as safe as cash is buffeted by the turmoil on Wall Street. Separately, four mutual fund firms are taking extraordinary steps to calm investor fears and protect customer investments. The companies – Wachovia Corp.’s Evergreen Investments, Bank of…
3 min readTreasuries rallied and bill rates plummeted on Wednesday as unrelenting financial market upheaval fed demand for cash and ultra-low-risk investments. Money market funds were big buyers of Treasuries as they anticipated heavy redemption by investors worried about money market funds’ exposure to securities issued by struggling insurer AIG (AIG.N), and by Lehman Brothers LEH.N, which…
1 min readhttps://www.investors.com/freddie-and-fannie-bailout-fears-mount
3 min readA report issued last week by financial industry leaders calling for greater private initiatives in containing systemic risk was greeted by some analysts as being a “no-brainer.” “Changing rules in assessing your counterparty risk seems to be a no-brainer in the context of what we’ve seen happen,” said Kurt Schacht, managing director of the CFA…
1 min readEver since the auction-rate securities mess erupted six months ago, the same story has echoed across Wall Street. The way UBS and other banks tell it, the $330 billion market functioned for years without a hitch, providing big corporations and wealthy investors with a highly liquid alternative to cash. Then, without warning, it imploded in…