The Associate Press writes "SEC puts off vote on rules for rating agencies", saying, "The Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday delayed a plan to adopt new rules aimed at stemming conflicts of interest in Wall Street's credit rating industry." The SEC will next discuss the issue at a public meeting Dec. 3. Regarding money funds, AP says, "The SEC also proposed another set of rules that could reduce the influence of the credit rating industry by, among other things, making it possible for money-market funds to buy short-term debt without the current requirement that it be highly rated by the agencies. The SEC will consider all the proposals at next month's meeting, though the conflict-of-interest rules may be the only ones adopted." Another link to check today is the Federal Reserve's H.4.1 "Factors Affecting Reserve Balances" Series, which discloses weekly totals in the Fed's "Asset-backed commercial paper money market mutual fund liquidity facility" (currently $80.2 billion, down $11.5 billion from last week) and its "Net portfolio holdings of Commercial Paper Funding Facility LLC" (which total $249.9 billion). They will also post the MMIFF numbers once the program goes live next week.
