Jonathan Hemmerdinger

Municipal and state officials nationwide were interviewed recently by participants in the George Mason University's Northern Virginia Fellows Program, a 12-member team of adult students who set out this spring to understand how municipalities in America have coped with financial distress.

To make more new-issue data available, the MSRB filed a proposed rule change to prohibit dealers from reporting "NRO" unless they also report price and yield information.

In response to a G-17 interpretive notice that takes effect August 2, a SIFMA task force will release a series of documents underwriters can reference as they prepare disclosures to issuers.

Government attorneys released snippets of taped conversations Monday in which UBS bankers and others use phrases like "baking in Chambers" and "the market," language prosecutors say helped them conspire to set bid prices and determine which firms would win contracts.

New Rule G-43 requires that broker's brokers make reasonable efforts to obtain fair and reasonable prices when conducting secondary-market "bid-wanted" auctions.

Mary Schapiro, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, laid out a case for additional money market reforms before the Senate Banking Committee Thursday.

Seasonally adjusted initial jobless claims fell to 387,000 for the week ending June 16, while continuing claims for the previous week remained at 3.299 million, the Department of Labor reported Thursday.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board unveiled three new paid information packages Wednesday, giving market participants access to historic primary market disclosures, historic continuing disclosures and historic data for variable-rate securities.

The market for variable-rate demand obligations and auction-rate securities continues to shrink, with outstanding par value of both types of securities tumbling in the 12 months ending in April, according to a report released by the MSRB.

Additional regulation of money-market mutual funds could increase short-term borrowing costs for state and local governments, leading municipalities to raise taxes or cut spending on infrastructure and other critical projects, according to a paper released Monday by a Georgetown University professor.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority ordered five firms — Neuberger Berman, Lawson Financial, Edward D. Jones, Estrada Hinojosa and UVEST Financial — to pay a total of nearly $120,000 in fines and restitution for violations of municipal securities rules.

FINRA will soon begin examining underwriters of municipal bonds to see if they can show they have carried out disclosure due-diligence obligations like those in a risk alert the SEC issued in March, a senior official said.

Executives from Fitch Ratings responded to issuer concerns, saying their agency does not require municipal bond issuers to sign indemnity agreements releasing Fitch from liabilities resulting from ratings.

CHICAGO — Ongoing turmoil in financial markets and historically low interest rates have led institutional investors to increase scrutiny of issuers’ disclosure documents, an insurance company investment officer said at the Government Finance Officers Association annual meeting.

CHICAGO — Government Finance Officers Association debt committee members on Sunday urged municipal issuers to consider disclosing information about their bank loans online on EMMA in the wake of a Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board notice requesting such information.

The GFOA moved closer to issuing a pension disclosure best-practices paper, when the group's committee on governmental debt management approved changes to its latest draft.

A federal judge rejected a request by the U.S. Justice Department to use sections of certain audio files as evidence in the upcoming bid-rigging trial against former UBS Financial Services bankers Peter Ghavami, Gary Heinz and Michael Welty.

WASHINGTON — Sentencing has been delayed until Oct. 25 for Adrian Scott-Jones, a former guaranteed investment contract broker who pleaded guilty in 2010 to charges of fraud and conspiracy in connection with alleged bid-rigging.

WASHINGTON — Seasonally adjusted initial jobless claims dropped 12,000 to 377,000 for the week ending June 2, while the number of continuing claims climbed 34,000 to 3.293 million for the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

Seasonally adjusted initial jobless claims dropped to 377,000 for the week ending June 2, while the number of continuing claims climbed to 3.293 million for the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday.