Market Outlook A strong Consumer Confidence number brought the bond bears out of the woodwork on Tuesday, driving Treasury yields to a 12-month high. The 10-year and 30-year Treasury levels hit daily closing highs of 2.15% and 3.31%, respectively, before settling down...
Month: May 2013
Despite Notable Improvement, California Metro Areas Still Face Unemployment Challenges
The Golden State is home to the two metro areas posting the greatest decline in unemployment rates among large metro areas in April 2013, compared to a year earlier. The unemployment rate fell by an even two percentage points in both the Riverside-San...
Only in Munis
Market Outlook As the financial markets return from the holiday and continue to digest the “Fed tapering” outlook, the focus will now shift to the next employment report on June 7th. The tax-exempt new issue calendar will be quite light in this holiday-shortened week...
Do Credit Ratings Matter Anymore?
Market Outlook The market didn’t have to look very far for clues about the Fed’s “tapering” intentions after all. Chairman Bernanke tackled the subject head-on yesterday at a Congressional briefing and gave the markets (both stocks and bonds) a...
Look What They’ve Done to Tax Exemption, Ma
For now, the municipal bond market is taking some degree of comfort in the projected $60 billion in re-investment flows coming in May and June. There is no guarantee, of course, that all that cash will find its way back into munis
Motown Breakdown
Market Outlook The Treasury market finally found some degree of support this morning after a four day losing streak that took yield levels to a two month high. While the economic data, here and abroad, continue to be mixed, fixed-income market participants have become...
State Governments Ready to Reposition Shadow and REO Inventories
by guest contributor, Peter Fugiel, Ph.D.The current housing price recovery in U.S. housing markets is being blocked from any full recovery by the continuing huge lender inventories of late and very late home loans. While the upscale and severely distressed...
Puerto Rico’s “Highway to the Danger Zone”
Puerto Rico bonds are back in the headlines, and not in a flattering way. The Commonwealth’s current fiscal crisis has blurred the hierarchy among PR issuers, but we believe sharp credit distinctions will return once the crisis is resolved
State Tax Revenues Continue to Experience “Sluggish Growth”
Despite growing state tax revenues over the past three years, states continue facing the fiscal challenges created by the Great Recession, explains Lucy Dadayan of the Rockefeller Institute of Government.
From School Districts to Charter Schools and Beyond
So far this week, the tax-exempt market has just been drifting without much conviction. Blame it on the Dow soaring to a new record high of 15,000. Blame it also on the fact that most tax reform proposals floating around in political circles would curtail, in varying...