MuniLand

Muniland was quiet today as market participants confined the bloodbath to the equity markets. Investors mainly sat on the sidelines and benchmark yields were unchanged. The Thomson Reuters Municipal Market Data 10-Year AAA Scale closed at 2.38%, unchanged from Friday. Reported volumes were light.

The worst muniland event of the day occurred when Moody’s announced that they had cut Puerto Rico’s general obligation debt rating to Baa1, a level close to the bottom of the investment grade scale. Because it is a territory, Puerto Rico has the unique distinction of enjoying national exemption from local and state taxes, so its debt is widely held across America. It is also among the cheapest municipal bonds available because the market believes it has some likelihood of default due to high levels of debt and unfunded pension liabilities.

The muniland non-story that commanded headlines was the expected downgrade of state and local bonds due to the Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the United States. Chris Mauro of RBC Capital Markets has some very good analysis about the arcana of this market and how the headlines are wildly overblown:

Because most municipal bonds are structured with serial and term maturities, the $2.9 trillion municipal bond market contains about 1.2 million individual CUSIPs, compared to about 75,000, for example for the US corporate bond market. As a result, S&P’s anticipated downgrade of pre-refunded municipal bonds and other directly linked bonds will, in the aggregate, produce a very attention-getting headline number.

We anticipate that most media outlets will run with this figure and highlight “thousands of municipal bond downgrades” in their headlines. We note, for example, that Moody’s, in its July 13, 2011 report on the potential implications of a US rating downgrade, identified 7,000 directly linked municipal ratings with approximately $130 billion in par value. Our immediate concern is that these kinds of headlines will prompt retail investors to engage in another wave of mutual fund selling.

It’s a little frustrating to hear commentators outside of muniland bash all municipal bonds as though they were a homogenous asset class. AOL’s Daily Finance ran a quote from the top regulator at the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, who is pushing back on this idea:

“It is important to remember that only four to six [defaults] make headlines, but 45,000 others are doing OK,” Lynnette Kelly Hotchkiss, executive director of the Municipal Securities Regulation Board, tells DailyFinance. “Remember that every issuer is unique and needs to be analyzed on its own merit.”

Reuters is running with the meme that the municipal bond market will likely be resilient in the face of Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the United States. Bloomberg is sailing in the opposite direction with a gloomy view of the prospect of downgrades for munis after S&P’s action. The Bond Buyer reports that low expected issuance should help buoy yields. And the Wall Street Journal details how muniland has passed a critical threshhold in the second quarter as municipalities were able to renew and renegotiate their bank backstop agreements:

As investors left the equity markets today, they moved into the fixed-income markets. The benchmark for bonds, the 10-year U.S. Treasury, had sharp gains and is now trading at 2.40 percent. The muniland equivalent benchmark, the 10-year AAA muni, ended at a slightly lower yield of 2.38 percent. (Remember the muni AAA has lovely tax advantages that push its yield much higher. Consult your accountant).

  Yield Market Change Dow - 4.31% S&P - 4.78 % Nasdaq - 5.08 % 2.40% 10-YR U.S. Treasury + 0.22 % 2.38% 10-YR AAA Muni + 0.07 %

Howard Cure, director of municipal research at Evercore Wealth Management, is asked in this Bloomberg video if Jefferson County, AL and Central Falls, RI are leading indicators of massive defaults in the municipal bond markets. He thinks not. After all, he says, these problems have been known for years.  For Cure, the real focus should be on what he calls the “three H’s:” hospitals, higher education and housing.  These entities are often heavily reliant on federal funds, which may be reduced in deficit negotiations. Muniland agrees and reminds everyone that there are vast differences in the fiscal and financial strengths of issuers.

Bondholders will win in trashed Rhode Island town

The Wall Street Journal is running a story on the Central Falls bankruptcy entitled “Bondholders Win in Rhode Island.” The story lauds how bondholders are ensured of receiving 100 cents on the dollar, although the bonds are currently valued at 62 cents on the dollar. Meanwhile retirees can expect their pensions to be cut by 34%.

Reading through the comments to a Providence Journal story on the threat to the state’s credit rating from the bankruptcy proceedings, I came across the following comment detailing the abject poverty of Central Falls, the community which is supposed to pay bondholders off at par. It’s shameful that a busted community would impose haircuts on all their creditors except bondholders.

Something doesn’t seem right in Central Falls, the Rhode Island city that declared municipal bankruptcy yesterday. Now that the state receiver has filed Chapter 9, all the town’s dirty laundry has been hung out in public, and, like any bankruptcy, it’s not pretty. Overspending and declining tax revenues doomed this poor town, along with liberal doses of alleged corruption.

Here is what doesn’t seem right in Central Falls. The city is dead broke and those they owe money to are lined up at City Hall to collect. But for some odd reason, the city’s bondholders have pushed ahead of all the others in line to claim full repayment of their debts; those later in line must settle for 50 cents on the dollar. Retired police officers and firemen will have their pensions cut by 50%.

It wasn’t Central Falls’s decision to give preferential treatment to bondholders. Last year legislators in the state capitol passed a law making the claims of bondholders superior to all other claims in bankruptcy. The Rhode Island General Assembly’s action flies in the the face of common bond market practice, which is that bondholders get in line with everyone else and a judge overseeing bankruptcy proceedings gives a fair resolution to all the creditors.

There are many financial linkages between various levels of government in muniland but everyone eventually has to stand on their own. It’s like the cousin you grew up with but don’t see much now other than holidays. When your cousin loses their job and their mortgage is being foreclosed you want to help but in a limited way. You want the cousin to get a job and cut a deal on their mortgage or do a short sale. You don’t want them moving into your home or having access to your bank account. It’s the same between the federal, state and local governments. They are cousins. But not that close.

My fellow Reuters blogger, Felix Salmon, said yesterday that states are considered too-big-to-fail by the financial markets:

There’s certainly a general understanding, in the markets, that California is too big to fail: if push came to shove, the federal government would bail it out rather than let it default.

Oh Illinois!

Illinois has massive problems: the state has more liabilities than assets, and the credit-default swap market says they are the number one state at risk for default (see chart above). The Bond Buyer ran an excellent story on how the liabilities of Illinois are rapidly increasing:

In a sign of Illinois’ ongoing fiscal challenges, its net assets deteriorated by $8.4 billion in fiscal 2010, pushing its deficit in that category of financial reporting up to a negative $37.9 billion, according to a new report from state auditor general William Holland.

The figure takes into account the state’s accounts payable that were $9.1 billion in fiscal 2010 and $55.1 billion of debt obligations, including outstanding bonds and pension obligations. The figures provide a wider view of a state’s overall long-term fiscal health than the snapshot provided by annual budget numbers.

Meredith Whitney has made a reputation for herself in muniland as an analyst that came from the equity markets to predict an impending municipal bond cataclysm. Municipal bond experts were flabbergasted at the enormity of Whitney’s call, as well as the lack of data she had to back it up. Her bark ended up being many times worse than her bite, and now my antennae are on high alert for analysts who come out of nowhere and make big, unfounded calls.

While working this afternoon I noticed John McDermott, a Financial Times blogger, tweet the following:

@johnpmcdermott MF global write that Moody’s underestimates vulnerability of school districts to a US downgrade — http://cot.ag/odqdwL

Minnesota reaches a deal

Minnesota agrees on a budget, ending a two week shutdown. But is it just accounting tricks? From the NewsObserver.com (emphasis mine):

Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton and top Republicans agreed Thursday to end a budget impasse that prompted the longest state government shutdown in recent history.

Dayton said the state government would be back in business “very soon,” but he didn’t say exactly when.

Several financial-media outlets ran stories today about state and local governments ramping up their bank borrowing in lieu of issuing municipal bonds. Often this is depicted as “emergency” borrowing to fill thin periods of cash flows. The story of California’s possible “bridge loan” to tide over their current “bridge loan” in Bloomberg was cast this way.

But other media accounts suggest this bank borrowing is growing beyond emergency needs and banks are actively seeking it. Michael Corkery of the Wall Street Journal reports:

Teams of bankers are blanketing the country pitching transactions like the one in Orange County, as well as traditional loans, to government officials, people in the industry say.