Markets

The primary market will again be severely diminished this week as several new issues remain in limbo against a backdrop of continued weakness in municipals and intense anxiety in the overall financial markets as a result of last week's government takeover of Washington Mutual and the pending resolution by Congress of the $700 million financial industry rescue plan.

Weekly reporting municipal bond mutual funds had a net outflow of $398 million during the period ending Sept. 24, AMG Data Services reported.

Tax-exempt money market funds began recovering some of the nearly $30 billion of outflows they suffered in the past seven days, but market participants say there's still a feeling of queasiness among traders and investors in the midst of a disconnect between municipal and Treasury securities as the government bailout program unfolds.

The Bond Buyer's weekly yield indexes pushed higher this week, as municipals grew consistently weaker in the wake of more than a week's worth of market turmoil.

CHICAGO - Despite remaining largely insulated from the turmoil in the capital markets so far, the years-long strong operating performance across the nonprofit health care sector could be headed for a decline in 2009, particularly among smaller, lower-rated credits, Fitch Ratings analysts said in a report on median ratios on the industry released yesterday.

Standard & Poor's Tuesday dropped its rating on the $709 million issue of Main Street Natural Gas Inc. Series 2008A project gas revenue bonds to default level, following a series of events that could potentially leave bondholders as unsecured creditors in Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings.

Despite all the volatility that permeated the tax-exempt market in the second quarter of 2008, the household sector chased higher absolute yields and increased its ownership of municipal debt by 1.3% to $912.4 billion, compared with $900.4 billion in the prior three-month period, according to quarterly data as of June 30 released by the Federal Reserve Board this week.

CHICAGO - The wave of upgrades on the horizon as rating agencies shift to a new global rating scale comes as governments face some of their toughest fiscal challenges in decades, and could sow uncertainty across the municipal market, investor analysts said at a recent roundtable here.

Weekly reporting municipal bond mutual funds had a net inflow of $89 million during the period ending Sept. 17, AMG Data Services reported.

Although the municipal market saw slight gains on Friday, the volatility that rocked Wall Street last week will continue to affect new-issue volume in the municipal market this week.