Sunday, March 28, 2010

Wealthy Unload Munis; Junk, Corporates, Equities, All Overpriced; Take Some Chips Off The Table

Inquiring minds are reading Rich Stunned by Recession Sell Munis for First Time by Bloomberg columnist Joe Mysak. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... HsUQsPsW0I

For the first time in decades, the rich showed no confidence in state and local governments during a recession.

This astonishing tale is told in the new edition of the Internal Revenue Service’s Statistics of Income Bulletin, which shows that in 2008, the latest year for which preliminary data is available, the richest taxpayers collected $7 billion less in tax-free interest than they did in 2007, an unprecedented drop of 15 percent.

The IRS had no explanation for the drop. A spokesman said there was no technical reason behind the decline, such as a change in tax treatment. So all we have are the numbers to tell the story.

Municipal bonds, as an asset class, were screaming “buy meâ€