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Tax proposals from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney would help drive municipal yields to the highest level since March by ending the debt’s tax advantage at lower income levels, Morgan Stanley estimates. Romney, who trailed President Barack Obama in some national polls this month, recommends ending federal taxes on interest, dividends and capital gains for those earning less than $200,000 annually. The shift would make [...]
Total issuance of fixed-rate municipal bonds through Sept. 14 has been about $248 billion, just $10 billion less than such sales in all of 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. States and municipalities issued about $258 billion in fixed-rate debt last year, the least since at least 2003, the data show. Issuance climbed to $408 billion in 2010 as localities rushed to sell taxable [...]
The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest pension in the U.S., reduced bonuses 12 percent for investment officers after stocks dragged down returns. Most also went without pay raises. The pension distributed $3.6 million in bonuses among 55 investment officers, down from $4.1 million last year, according to Calpers data. The sums are based on investment results over [...]
California debt is poised to extend its biggest rally in at least 18 years as Governor Jerry Brown curbs borrowing and pushes for tax increases to plug deficits. The extra yield over top-rated municipal bonds that investors demand to own 10- year securities of the most-populous U.S. state and its localities is set to fall for a fifth straight quarter. That’s [...]
California may see more Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcies than the three that have been filed since June, according to Controller John Chiang. Municipal budgets already strained by surging pension costs and declining real-estate tax revenue were stripped of more than $1 billion in local redevelopment funds and vehicle-license fees to cut California’s deficit. Stockton, San Bernardino and Mammoth Lakes filed for bankruptcy in [...]
Chicago teachers did more yesterday than end the city’s first school strike in 25 years. Union delegates quelled an outbreak of labor unrest in President Barack Obama’s hometown with seven weeks to go before the presidential election. Delegates, who soundly refused to suspend their walkout two days earlier, voted overwhelmingly to reverse themselves yesterday, sending 350,000 students back to class. “It was [...]
New York’s Suffolk County, home of the Hamptons beach towns, is paying twice as big a penalty to borrow than it did a year ago, even after budget analysts cut its projected deficit in half. The 86-mile stretch of eastern Long Island, where billionaires George Soros and John Paulson own estates, may face a $179 million gap through next year, according to the [...]
Municipal bonds backed by revenue from essential services such as electricity and water are in their biggest slump since 2009 as the Fed’s stimulus policies discourage investors from buying safer assets. Electric-utility debt has gained 4.1 percent this year, and water and sewer bonds have returned 4.7 percent, Barclays Plc indexes show. That makes them the two worst-performing types of revenue securities, [...]
Jane Mendillo, who took over as head of Harvard University’s $32 billion endowment four years ago, is still searching for an edge. While Harvard has recouped about half of the $10 billion it lost after global financial markets collapsed in 2008, Stanford, Columbia and Princeton universities have been posting bigger gains. Colleges are preparing to report modest returns for the year [...]
Build America Bonds, orphaned after Congress failed to extend the program in 2010, are on a pace to beat Treasuries and tax-exempts for a third straight year. Created by President Barack Obama’s 2009 economic stimulus, the taxable bonds have earned 8.3 percent this year through Sept. 12, compared with 1.7 percent for federal debt and 5.8 percent for [...]
