Today’s post reacts to the interesting article published recently in the Bond Buyer , entitled ‘ How the coronavirus is impacting perceptions of municipal credit, ratings ’. The article raises some very interesting points regarding the usefulness of credit ratings in the ‘muni’ marketplace, and also the impact that regulations on the disclosure and following of public methodologies may be having upon the position of the agencies. ‘Municipal bonds’ are simply bonds issues by a state, municipality, or county in order to finance any of its capital expenditure; this is similar to the process of generating sovereign bonds for countries, for example. However, with a number of major US muni issuers being hit with rating downgrades recently – including Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority – there are questions being raised as to how valuable these downgrades actually are. That concept is based on the understanding that a. t...