IT IS a huge investment class: a $2.8 trillion one, to be exact. And it had long been thought of as a mundane one, just a notch more adventurous than a current account. Yet writing new rules for America’s money-market funds, which invest in short-term commercial and government debt, has been “one of the most flawed and controversial” deliberations ever undertaken by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Wall Street’s main regulator, according to Luis Aguilar, the only one of the five commissioners in office throughout the process.By a 3-2 vote on July 23rd, the SEC at last approved two big changes. The first allowed funds to impose fees on redemptions or suspend them for up to ten days to prevent runs. The second requires that the most volatile funds, which cater to institutions and invest in corporate debt, disclose the value of a share to a fraction of a penny.The second change is more important than it sounds. By convention, money-market funds are priced at a steady dollar a share; changes in value are reflected only in the interest they pay. Variations in the value of the underlying assets are small because they mature in a matter of...
from The Economist: Finance and economics http://ift.tt/1mJ583v
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