Investments

Transportation advocates want to put the kibosh on congressional proposals to slash the federal gasoline tax and turn over almost all highway funding to the states.

IOWA

ALABAMA

Volume is expected to edge up for the second week in a row as over $7 billion is predicted to arrive in the primary market, anchored by a pair of billion-dollar deals from New York and California.

The Detroit City Council Friday approved a new regional water authority to take over the bulk of the Detroit Water and Sewer Department and also gave the green light to the city's bankruptcy settlement with bond insurer Syncora Guarantee Inc.

Sophisticated investors are grabbing for high-yield municipal debt whenever they can find it, creating demand for alternatives beyond the Puerto Rico, Detroit, and tobacco bonds that dominate the non-investment grade segment of the secondary market.

Bipartisan bill introduced in the House would divert 10% of federal highway dollars to state-run transportation grant programs that would fund local projects.

CALIFORNIA

ARIZONA

Foreign investors' buildup in U.S. municipal bond holdings has heightened significance in the current low-supply high-demand market environment, in which an emerging group of buyers could cause competition for the limited amount of bonds available to spike.

Inflows to municipal bond funds dropped by 58% in the week ending Sept. 17.

The weekly average yield to maturity of the Bond Buyer Municipal Bond Index, which is based on 40 long-term bond prices, was unchanged the week of Sept. 18 at 4.46%.

Any sale of the art in the Detroit Institute of Arts would make the DIA "persona non grata in the museum world," a museum official and an art finance consultant testified at a trial on the city's bankruptcy exit plan.

House committee okays plan to cut Amtrak's allocation for capital projects to $770 million a year from the current $1.3 billion.

CALIFORNIA

ARIZONA

The Michigan Strategic Fund approved the issuance of $450 million of 30-year bonds to finance a new hockey stadium near downtown Detroit, a transaction that will feature a mix of tax-exempt and taxable debt, a mandatory tender and interest-rate swaps.

The trustee for $6 million of unrated bonds issued for Iowa Wesleyan College will ask a judge to allow it to enter a forbearance agreement with the school ahead of an expected technical default on debt service coverage ratios.

P3s can often deliver high-cost projects more quickly than wholly public efforts but can't solve the nation's infrastructure deficit alone.

Tolls on existing interstate highways will be an increasingly common way of funding road projects within 10 years, experts say.