Investment Company Institute (ICI) chief Paul Schott Stevens is fighting yet another foe in the money market reform debate. This time Stevens finds himself on the other side of the issue from a top national newspaper: the Wall Street Journal.

Over the weekend the WSJ published a letter to the editor from Stevens, in which he attacked the paper for its "blindness" on the issue, responding to an unsigned editorial last week when then the WSJ called on the money fund industry to work with the ICI on a floating NAV switch. Stevens has publicly and vocally opposed certain proposals, like the floating NAV, for quite some time.

Also over the weekend, the WSJ's Kirsten Grind updated readers about the state of the ongoing money fund reform fight. On August 22 SEC chairman Mary Schapiro conceded defeat on her own proposals — then on September 27 U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner formally requested that the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which he leads, take up the money fund reform cause where the SEC left off. The WSJ called that move the first time that the FSOC moved to "encroach on an independent regulator's turf."

Now Federated Investors chief Chris Donahue tells the WSJ that money market fundsters "are back in the game" of fighting regulators over reform proposals. The paper worries that fundsters "could be a facing a tougher battle this time." 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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