Federated Investors has published two new brochures on its "Money Market Matters" website. Written by Arnold Porter's John Hawke, the first is "Leave Money Funds Alone!," while the second is "Money Market Funds and Folklore: A Response to Chairman Volcker." The first paper says, "There is an unseemly -- and entirely unwarranted -- amount of bashing of money market mutual funds (MMFs) going on in Washington and Academia these days. Unseemly because much of it is uninformed and wrongheaded, and unwarranted because MMFs do not present a threat to our economic health that the bashing would imply. The "remedies" that the bashers would propose would not only threaten the continued viability and availability of MMFs, but could themselves have unintended consequences that would be harmful, such as the constriction of short-term credit to businesses and state and local governments." The second explains, "For more than 40 years, since the time he served as Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Paul A. Volcker has made clear his strong antipathy to money market mutual funds (MMFs). His most recent attack came in his William Taylor Memorial Lecture to a conference of the Group of 30, a private body made up of public and private representatives and academics."
