Buy side

Most municipal analysts bristle at the claim that California will “become the next Greece.”

Nearly all The Bond Buyer’s yield indexes declined slightly during this holiday-shortened week amid moderate secondary trading activity and rising Treasury yields.

After a short-lived period of inflows last week, tax-exempt money market funds experienced $1.81 billion of outflows and settled at $330.29 billion in total net assets for the week ending Oct. 11, according to the Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.

The municipal floating-rate note may have begun to take off at precisely the wrong time.

More than half of the floating-rate notes sold this year have been from state-run student loan securitization pools, nearly all with Libor as the reference rate and most underwritten by Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Early this year, the municipal floating-rate note was fast emerging as a potent tool for local governments to maintain some variable-rate component in their debt profiles.

The municipal bond mutual fund industry shrank last week for the first time since June as investors handed over the smallest slug of new money in more than three months, with intermediate-term muni bonds absorbing the biggest hit.

After the deluge of supply last week, the municipal market will see a noticeable lull in new-issue activity this week.

The Bond Buyer's weekly yield indexes were narrowly mixed this week, as fears of a supply-driven sell-off were washed away by two days of gains, spurred by refunding postponements and rallying Treasuries.

Tax-exempt money market funds ended a string of outflows as they swept up $476.9 million of new cash the week ending Oct. 4, boosting total net assets to $332.1 billion, according to the Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.

The first full week of the fourth quarter gets underway with $13.13 billion of new, long-term volume, which is expected to continue to re-energize a thin and sleepy primary market, according to Ipreo LLC and The Bond Buyer.

The flow of new cash into municipal bond mutual funds continued to recede last week as investors began to rediscover their appetite for risk.

Nearly all The Bond Buyer’s weekly yield indexes rose slightly as an influx of new-issue supply weighed on municipals.

CHICAGO — The continuing-care retirement community sector is starting to show signs of stabilization after suffering through two years of hardship, according to credit analysts.

Tax-exempt money market funds experienced significant outflows during the week ending Sept. 27, virtually mirroring the previous reporting period, as $2.73 billion fled the market, leaving the funds with $331.62 billion in total net assets, according to the Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.

CHICAGO — Municipal investors shouldn’t automatically shun an issuer’s debt due to a severe unfunded pension obligation without a more in-depth review that includes an issuer’s ability to address the liability, Nuveen Investments suggests in a new report on state and local pensions for investors.

Municipal issuers that are more likely to have trouble renewing bank guarantees supporting floating-rate debt face greater scrutiny from Moody’s Investors ­Service, the rating agency said in a report Wednesday.

The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research Wednesday released a report arguing that higher interest rates on taxable bonds issued by Illinois and California indicate they are more likely than other states to default on their debts.

State and local government tax receipts grew modestly in the second quarter of 2010 as an acceleration in consumer spending boosted sales tax revenue.

While municipal market professionals said they do not believe there is systemic risk in state and local government debt, there are underlying issues and credit challenges.