Dan Seymour

The payments that cigarette manufacturers make to the states are dwindling as people smoke less, posing the latest setback to tobacco bonds — a sector that’s enjoyed little good news since the financial crisis.

Combined state and local government tax receipts rose modestly in the first quarter as the revenue sources most sensitive to swings in the economy picked up along with economic growth.

Municipal bond mutual funds commanded a modest sum of new money last week. Muni funds reported $151.5 million in new money from investors during the week ended June 23, according to Lipper FMI.

Vanguard is jumping into the municipal bond exchange-traded fund fray, proposing to launch three muni ETFs with the lowest fees in the industry.

Wells Fargo is merging nearly $2.2 billion of Evergreen Investments municipal bond mutual funds into existing Wells funds as part of the bank’s purchase of Wachovia.

Flows into municipal bond mutual funds remain moderate by recent standards.

The sovereign debt crisis in Europe is coupling with the general malaise in financial markets to make life easier for tax-free money market funds by boosting key short-term interest rates.

Invesco PowerShares plans to launch its second exchange-traded fund devoted to Build America Bonds, highlighting both the proliferation of municipal ETFs and the growing importance of taxable state and local government debt.

The flow of cash to municipal bond mutual funds continues to strengthen.

Investors who counted on diversification to shield them from market swings learned during the financial crisis they were not as diversified as they thought.

George Friedlander was among those let go under the Morgan Stanley Smith Barney restructuring last week, according to sources familiar with the situation.

Municipal closed-end funds are fiddling while everyone else burns.

Arbitration panels for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority have ordered Citigroup to pay roughly $2.2 million to investors who lost money in one of the bank’s municipal bond arbitrage vehicles.

The migration of states and local governments into the taxable bond market continues to squeeze the supply of long-term, tax-free bonds.

Municipal bond mutual funds commanded a moderate sum of new money last week as investors remained averse to risk.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie earlier this week remarked that if the state didn’t clean up its act it could become the next Greece.

The municipal universe continues to shrug off the panic enveloping financial markets across the world.

Municipalities with floating-rate debt, especially those with lower bond ratings, are likely to face high costs to renew their liquidity facilities this year and next — if they can obtain them at all.

Municipal bond mutual funds continued to garner cash last week despite the flight from risk that has driven most of the flows this month.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has accused the former manager of two Schroders Investment Management municipal bond mutual funds of tipping his family members about impending distress to the funds and urging them to sell their shares.