Practice

How serious are liquidity problems with money market mutual funds?

Get a little imagination, guys.

The ongoing credit crisis saga has taken a tremendous toll on hedge funds due to their exposure to structured mortgage-backed assets-and for those heading or parsing trades overseas to avoid U.S. taxes: Beware.

Mutual fund investors held resilient in the second quarter of the year, "shrugging off weakness in the labor and housing markets and even ignoring the rising cost of oil and gas," announced Tom Roseen, senior research analyst for Lipper, during the firm's press conference last Tuesday on the quarter's results.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke called for a stronger central bank last week, and outlined a proposal that would provide the Fed with more regulatory control over large New York-based financial companies that are not associated with commercial banks, like Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers.

According to a study released by the Investment Company Institute, mutual funds voted overwhelmingly in support for management proposals in 2007, yet a mere 38% of shareholder proposals were backed.

The Asian Development Bank has launched a new environmentally based mutual fund.The Future Carbon Fund is tied to environmental initiatives from the Kyoto Protocol, which is set to expire at the end of 2012.

A source for the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) recently stated that the CSRC only suggested that senior mutual fund officials remain in China until the Olympics in early August to keep a stable market, they are in no which way barring them from leaving the country.

In a report released yesterday on what went wrong at the ratings agencies responsible for grading instruments tied to subprime debt, the Securities and Exchange Commission found a breakdown in communications.

Most individuals are not saving enough for retirement because they are not compensating for rising medical costs, lengthening life spans, and the declining availability of pension and retiree medical benefits, according to a study by Hewitt Associates.