Ideally, during the time you own short-term securities you will have only a sense of confidence that your dollar is always worth a dollar and your interest, however small, is always accumulating. When this confidence is threatened, expect powerful emotions including a sense of betrayal and a loss of faith. When the dollar value of the principal is threatened, savers take to the streets and to the polls to preserve that value. The FSLIC (Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation) and the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) guaranteed savings and loan (S&L) and bank savings instruments for up to $100,000. The savings and loan crisis of the early 1990s created a scare that these guarantees would not be honored; failed banks and S&Ls might redeem CDs and savings accounts at less than face value. In the 1980s, the S&L industry made contributions to politicians in order to secure deregulation of the industry. Thereafter, they were able to invest federally insured funds in risky enterprises. When the enterprises failed and the S&Ls were unable to pay back federally insured depositors, the indebted politicians began to argue that the federal guarantees should not be honored. Savers should have evaluated the trustworthiness of banks and S&Ls before they saved with them. Emotions became extreme.Politicians were booted out of office; Charles Keating and other bank officers were prosecuted for criminal offenses; and the guarantee to savings was retained. From this, money market fund sponsors learned that the principal value of the fund could not fluctuate even in the worst economic crisis or savers would only place money in federally insured products.
