The Federal Reserve’s decision to keep interest rates low is providing stimulus to a once contracting Wall Street business: underwriting municipal bonds.
State and local government debt sales may surge to a record in 2020, extending this year’s boom, as borrowing costs hold near the lowest in over half a century, according to forecasts from some of the market’s biggest underwriters. That marks a welcome shift for banks that saw bond work dry up in 2018 after President Donald Trump signed legislation that blocked new tax-exempt debt sales for a major type of refinancing known as an advance refunding.
