The market for auction-rate securities seems to be coming to a screeching halt. And that's a frightening prospect for those companies that consider ARS to have the safety of cash on their balance sheets.
SOME well-heeled investors got a big jolt from Goldman Sachs this week: Goldman, the most celebrated bank on Wall Street, refused to let them withdraw money from investments that they had considered as safe as cash.
The investments at issue are so-called auction-rate securities, instruments at the center of the latest squeeze in the credit markets.
Goldman, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and other banks have been telling investors the market for these securities is frozen — and so is their cash.
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