Markets

After downgrading Assured Guaranty, Moody's Investors Service has taken action on the short-term and long-term ratings of 78 variable rate demand bonds.

Tax-exempt money market funds continued their downward as they reported $2.44 billion of outflows, for the second week in a row of net outflows.

The large scale changes sweeping the nonprofit health care sector, chief among them changes in payment methods, are driving the record-setting consolidation trend among hospitals, Fitch Ratings says.

Two hospitals in Chicago's western suburbs — Elmhurst Memorial Healthcare and Edward Hospital & Health Services — are the latest to merge, joining the two-year-old surge nationally of not-for-profit healthcare consolidation.

Moody's Investors Service placed tobacco settlement revenue bonds of issuers in 17 states and two territories under review with direction uncertain because of legal settlement announced in December. The action affects $20.5 billion of debt.

An estimated $9.19 billion is expected to be priced in the municipal primary market, compared with a revised $5.89 billion last week, as billion-dollar-plus deals from Ohio and New Jersey head the negotiated slate.

Illinois will take competitive bids on $500 million of GOs later this month in its first borrowing of the New Year and first test of market reaction to the General Assembly's failure to overhaul pensions.

Standard & Poor's revised its growth forecast for 2013 on state and local governments to be slightly higher and Fitch Ratings gave most sectors a stable outlook for the year.

Municipal bond mutual funds recorded a second consecutive week of strong flows, as funds that report their flows weekly saw $1.44 billion in inflows for the week of Jan. 16