Fidelity

Municipal Debt Lures Yield-Hungry Investors in Second Quarter

For evidence of investors' appetite for municipal debt, look no further than New Jersey.

That is where delays have plagued the planned megamall American Dream for more than a decade. Nevertheless, investors last month flooded into unrated public authority bonds designed to revive the 2.9 million-square-foot project.

The $1.1 billion offering, which promised returns of as much as 6.86%, is a sign of how hungry investors are for new municipal debt despite mounting fiscal problems in some cities and states around the country.

Buyers have snapped up nearly $88 billion in new public bonds this year through Friday, up 8% from the same period last year, according to Thomson Reuters. That happened as annual borrowing by local governments rose to a seven-year high.

It also comes as ratings firms have downgraded Illinois and Hartford, Conn., to the brink of junk status, and the troubled U.S. territory of Puerto Rico was placed under court protection as a way of sorting through its mountain of liabilities.

"The market is able to take these individual events in stride," said John Miller, co-head of global fixed income at Nuveen Asset Management.