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Friday, April 23, 2010

An eye opener!

I'm getting a little lesson on just how unmonitored and unsupervised municipal bond issues--like those backing the new convention center--are over at CM Emily Evans twitter stream. Jump over and see what a wild, wild west it is. My Twitter stream is available here in the right-hand column in the black box.


UPDATE: The most salient point in CM Evans' twitter stream concerns the governing body that Congress appointed to regulate and protect municipalities on bond issues, the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB), whose appointees are a small group of finance industry insiders from banks like JPMorgan:


We have to ask at this point, if it is rigged, was it rigged against Metro Nashville when Mayor Karl Dean went to Wall Street last week and lauded the market for "validating" his convention center plan?
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1 comment:

  1. Metro Councilmember Emily EvansFri Apr 23, 11:46:00 AM CDT

    Actually to be fair, the MSRB was not designed to protect municipal bond issuers. It was designed to protect investors. The issuer community has rarely, if ever, used its influence to encourage regulation except when they raise their c. 1985 arguments against regular financial report filings. Ironically, while they were worried about how much it costs to send a PDF file to the MSRB, the industry was engaging in practices that cost them millions if not billions.

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