Public finance

ALABAMA

Strong demand for municipal bonds buoyed prices throughout the week. Muni Bond Buyer indexes fell noticeably, reflecting the lower rates.

Investor demand outlasted the end-of-summer doldrums with robust inflows to municipal bond mutual funds. But the past week saw those flows to weekly reporting funds fall to more modest levels, $256 million in inflows for the week ended Sept. 19.

Fitch Ratings is negative on localities and expects an increase in their defaults and bankruptcies.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Thrash Thursday morning granted Atlanta another 13 years to complete consent-related work on its massive sewer repair program.

After garnering over $1 billion that ended a nearly month-long, outflow pattern last week, tax-exempt money market funds were back in negative territory this week as they lost $449.9 million and total net assets settled at $269.80 billion for the week ended Sept. 17, according to The Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.

ARKANSAS

ARKANSAS

Moody's Investors Service is maintaining its negative outlook on U.S. states' credit.

Fitch Ratings placed all charter school bonds it rates on Rating Watch Negative after adopting changes to how it evaluates such credits.

CALIFORNIA

GEORGIA

Moody's Investors Service has downgraded 11 issuers of special tax supported bonds and upgraded three of these issuers.

Underwriters may soon have to adapt to changes in the way they market, conduct, and report the results of retail order periods if the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board gets its way under a new proposal. The securities regulatory agency is seeking to improve and make retail order periods even safer for issuers and investors.

Retail order periods were first designed to give individual mom and pop investors some muscle in the battle for bond allocations by giving their orders for new issues priority consideration a day or two before the official pricing. Some 15 years later, retail order periods have enjoyed a long track record, growing in popularity and continuing to be an important component of the new-issue pricing process for issuers and investors, municipal experts and underwriters said.

ILLINOIS

ALABAMA

Table as of: 09/17/2012 16:46 PM Invisible Supply Issuer and purpose Amount

The threat that federal subsidy payments for Build America Bonds could be slashed under the sequestration process after administration officials assured issuers those payments were safe could permanently sour the muni market on BABs and other direct pay bonds, market participants said Monday.

Transportation advocates are upset about the sequestration cuts. Although most dedicated funding sources for transportation infrastructure were protected from the mandatory spending reductions, highways and airports could both take a hit if Congress doesn't act.