Markets

New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo Monday filed fraud charges against Charles Schwab & Co., alleging it misled investors about the risks of auction-rate securities.

The municipal market will get another significant dose of Build America Bonds this week when more than $2 billion of the taxable securities are expected to arrive in the primary market as part of an estimated $7.26 billion in total new-issue volume, according to Ipreo LLC and The Bond Buyer.

Even the most uninviting yields ever on short-term municipal debt cannot stem the tidal wave of cash flooding short-term municipal bond mutual funds.

After seeing slight losses last week, the total assets of tax-exempt money market funds rose by $2.07 billion and settled at $448.94 billion for the week ending Aug. 10, according to the Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com of Westborough, Mass.

The Bond Buyer’s yield indexes were mixed this week, as the municipal market experienced little movement, with a good primary market supply and fairly light secondary trading activity.

For an illustration of the global reach of the credit crisis, consider the plight of Narvik, a Norwegian municipality on the banks of the Ofotfjord.

A spike in Treasury rates threatens to stomp out the rally in short-term municipal bonds, investors and analysts say.

The rate at which investors stuff money into municipal bond mutual funds continues to break every record.

Given the recent summer doldrums in the municipal market, investors should be eager to sink their teeth into meaty new issues on the primary market calendar this week.

Retail investors face a drought of new tax-free municipal bonds.