Former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins writes in The American Enterprise Institute's The American publication, "Mistaken Ideas about Money-Market Funds". He says, "Proposed regulations by the SEC are bad for investors, threaten the ability of money-market mutual funds to provide capital, and would pose serious economic risks. For more than 40 years, money-market mutual funds have helped businesses, states, and municipalities meet their financial needs by purchasing their short-term debt. But now, Washington bureaucrats threaten to impose major changes to the structure of these funds, supposedly to decrease risk in the financial system. Remarkably, the current discussion comes just two years after the Securities and Exchange Commission tightened credit standards, shortened maturities, and increased disclosure requirements for money-market mutual fund assets.... One change would require funds to publish the value of the funds' shares at more specific prices, rather than rounding their net asset value (NAV) to the nearest penny as they do currently. The intent of the proposed change is to highlight the technicality that the funds' NAV actually "floats" within a very narrow range around a dollar. However, because these historical variances are so immaterial and temporary (usually from 1/5 to 1/10 of a penny or less) money-market mutual funds report their prices just as every other mutual fund does -- rounding to the nearest penny. Reporting prices to a tenth of a penny just for floating's sake would force costly new accounting and tax reporting for all investors and would prevent many institutions and government entities from investing in the funds. Is that worth showing a change of $0.001 per day in share prices? ... A third change would limit fund investors' right to receive all their money upon redemption of their shares. Such a restriction would conflict with liquidity requirements in the investment policies of many government and institutional investors and would destroy a key benefit for all investors seeking modest market returns in exchange for flexibility and liquidity."
