Last week investors panicked. You can’t really blame them considering the state stocks and money markets were in:

-A 158-year-old investment bank failed.

-The nation’s largest brokerage rushed into the arms of Bank of America to stave off a similar fate.

-The world’s largest insurance company was on the verge of going belly up before Uncle Sam showed up at its bedside.

-And the country’s oldest money market fund – the Reserve Primary Fund – “broke the buck,” handing back shareholders less than a dollar a share.

Apparently, investors found this last development the most unnerving of all. To paraphrase Mel Brooks: Fat-cat bankers and brokers losing their multi-million dollar jobs is comedy. Me getting back 97 cents on the dollar is tragedy.

Of course, one expects to get less out of a money market than he put in, no matter how pitiful the yield.

But Reserve Primary owned a slug of commercial paper (i.e. short-term debt) issued by Lehman Brothers. And Lehman, of course, filed for bankruptcy earlier in the week.

A couple of days later, Putnam Investments closed one of its money market funds because of a run of withdrawals, even thought the fund hadn’t lost any of its shareholders’ money.

Thousands of investors woke up to the fact that money market funds don’t come with a principal guarantee, government or corporate.

At least… they didn’t until last week.

Trasury Department Insures Money Market Funds

On Friday, the Treasury Department announced that the government for the first time would insure money market funds to discourage investors from pulling trillions of dollars out and creating financial chaos in the process.

That calmed things down. Prior to the announcement, investors pulled more than $220 billion from money market funds last week.

How safe is the cash you hold in a bank or brokerage firm that is outside of a money market account? Pretty darn safe.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) guarantees bank deposits up to $100,000 per person, per insured institution. (So if you and your spouse have a joint account, for example, you’re insured up to $200,000.)

If your bank fails, you may have a period where you cannot access your money, but Uncle Sam will make sure you get your principal back.

The cash (and other securities) in your brokerage account are insured by Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) up to $500,000. When a brokerage is closed due to bankruptcy or other financial difficulties, SIPC steps in and returns your cash and other securities.

From its creation by Congress in 1970 through December 2007, SIPC advanced $508 million to make possible the recovery of $15.7 billion in assets for an estimated 625,000 investors. (Bear in mind, this is protection against your broker going out of business, not the companies you invested in.)

So heave a sigh of relief. But don’t get too comfortable.

U.S Government, FDIC, and SIPC are Prtoecting Your Cash

Yes, the U.S. government is protecting the money in your money market account – for now. And the FDIC and SIPC are protecting your other cash.

But for a few days last week, the financial markets were coming apart at the seams. The Federal government rushed out a bailout plan (details pending) and suddenly the stock market shouted “Hallelujah!”

But don’t uncork the good champagne just yet. I believe the worst is behind us for now. But this financial crisis isn’t over.

Confidence has been badly scarred. Investors have gazed over the edge of the precipice and gotten a serious reality check. Many more families are now thinking in terms of return of capital rather than just return on capital.

The financial markets will rise again. At some point they will rise dramatically, as they always do after a crisis. But first there has to be a healing process.

As James Madison said a couple hundred years ago, “The circulation of confidence is better than the circulation of money.”

And in today’s complex, interrelated financial markets, you simply won’t have the latter without the former.

Good Investing,

Alexander Green
Investment U