A Municipal Bonds Blog

A Tale of Two Sectors: BABs and Everyone Else, (4/1/11)

Peter Demirali is a portfolio manager and heads Cumberland’s taxable fixed income area and is a long time veteran of taxable fixed income markets. He is a member of Cumberland…

Museum Bonds Default

Smart Money magazine and the  NY Times reported on the  NYC American Folk Arts museum that went bankrupt by defaulting on its muni bonds in Mid August 2010.

Japan To Kick Out Ratings Agencies

Japan’s has begun   severing  the global vice  grip of  the 3 major  credit raters. Make no mistake,  the  “Keystone Cops” ( Moodys, S&P and Fitch)  once  powerful influence over nations,…

Moodys, et.al. Goes On Strike

The FINREG bill signed into law this week is already creating economic casualties and a complete standstill for new bond issuance.

Legal Fights Over Credit Ratings-Firm Liability Rule

Credit raters judge risk & value and were given special limited liability privileges because investors and markets crave their expert opinions. Ideally they provide an objective baseline for consistent rating…

Bond Early Warning System Needed for Monitoring Defaults

How can investment advisors monitor the 1.5 million cusips from 60,000 different issuers if most bonds ratings are stale or are not rated at all? We need an Bond early…

Andrew Ross Sorkin, from NY Times Discusses Ratings Meltdown on Brian Lehrer show (WNYC)

Here is a good interview with our favorite radio host, Brain Lehrer from WNYC and Andrew Ross Sorkin, columnist and financial reporter for The New York Times as they discuss…

Stale Ratings: Testimony of Moody’s Former Head of Compliance

Its fair to say that when rating agencies recalibrated their muni ratings in Q2 2010 to bring them in-line with other debt types, they did not conduct a credit review….

Obituary: Las Vegas Monorail Project

The Las Vegas Monorail Project is dead but long live its muni bonds which while in default, still trade regularly. They are “junk” muni bonds yielding 15%.