Dan Seymour

Closed-end municipal bond funds continue to enjoy shelter from the turbulence plaguing the rest of the sector.

Investors pulled cash out of municipal bond mutual funds last week for just the third time in a year and a half, despite a strong week for state and local government debt.

Wells Fargo is merging nearly $2.2 billion of Evergreen Investments municipal bond mutual funds into existing Wells funds as part of the bank’s purchase of Wachovia.

Invesco PowerShares plans to launch its second exchange-traded fund devoted to Build America Bonds, highlighting both the proliferation of municipal ETFs and the growing importance of taxable state and local government debt.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie earlier this week remarked that if the state didn’t clean up its act it could become the next Greece.

State Street Global Advisors and Nuveen Investments launched an exchange-traded fund tracking Build America Bonds yesterday as investment vehicles devoted to taxable municipal debt continue to proliferate.

Some municipal bonds have rallied significantly since Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings last month overhauled their systems for assigning ratings to state and local government credits — effectively upgrading almost the entire universe of muni bonds.