Kyle Glazier

Standard and Poor's has told issuers of municipal bonds this week that the rating agency expects borrowers seeking a rating to disclose all debt-like obligations, including increasingly-popular bank loans.

Housing starts increased 6.8% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 914,000 in May, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday.

The National Federation of Municipal Analysts is working on several new issue and disclosure initiatives geared to helping issuers navigate debt transactions.

The U.S. current account deficit rose to $106.1 billion in the first quarter of 2013 from a revised $102.3 billion deficit in the fourth quarter of 2012, originally reported as $110.4 billion, the Commerce Department reported Friday.

The Highway Trust Fund will need an additional $85 billion in U.S. general fund transfers over the next six years just to keep the program operating despite recent events that have shown that current spending is not enough, a Department of Transportation official told a Senate Panel Thursday.

Business inventories rose 0.3% to $1.66 trillion in April, while sales fell 0.1% to $1.27 trillion, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

Retail sales climbed 0.6% to $421.1 billion in May after rising an unrevised 0.1% in April, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

The federal government ran a $138.7 billion budget deficit in May after posting a $112.9 billion surplus the previous month, the Treasury Department reported Wednesday.

Dealers generally like the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board's proposed rules governing sophisticated municipal market professionals, which need less protection than retail investors, but are seeking some clarifications and suggesting the rules expanded to cover small hedge funds.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board announced Wednesday that it has added an experienced securities lawyer, Michael L. Post, to its roster as a deputy general counsel.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced Tuesday that his agency received applications for $9 billion of Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery grants, when only $474 million is available.

Broker-dealers charged billions of dollars in excessive markups on municipal bond trades from 2005 to 2013, according to a new study.

Sales of merchant wholesalers climbed 0.5% to $416.6 billion in April, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission a rule to establish a database for 529 college savings plans.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged the leader of a Detroit-based investment advisor for stealing nearly $3.1 million from a pension fund that his firm manages for the city's police officers and firefighters.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is asking market participants to help it craft a definition of retail money market funds as part of a set of reforms that it proposed Wednesday.

Securities and Exchange Commission members on Wednesday unanimously agreed to propose reforms for money market funds, which muni market participants greeted with mixed reaction.

Panelists at a conference here on Monday warned issuer officials to be wary of dealer contracts that might violate municipal securities rules and to make sure they are using properly registered municipal advisors.

Underwriter disclosure letters required under the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board's fair dealing rule continue to cause confusion and apprehension among issuers, members of the Government Finance Officer's Association's debt committee said at a meeting on Saturday.

Issuer officials expressed trepidation Saturday about upcoming Securities and Exchange Commission rulemaking and the prospects of SEC bringing more disclosure-based enforcement cases against them.