Barron's [subscription required] summarizes the likely fate of different classes of Auction Rate Securities (ARS) holders -- the $330 billion market for securities that used to reset in weekly auctions before it froze up in February. It reports that If you hold ARSs sold by a municipality or a taxable, closed-end mutual fund you may already have gotten your money back or may do so within weeks. And those holding issues from tax-free, closed-end municipal-bond funds will likely see some money back before long. But others may have a long wait ahead.

I first wrote about this in February and since then, the post has accumulated 4,031 comments. I cannot imagine how difficult it must be for these people to think they had their money in a safe, money-market like fund -- only to discover that they could not get access to their money at all. It appears that many of these ARS holders did not receive a prospectus and were not warned that the auctions could fail.

Meanwhile, here's Barron's prognosis for the different classes of ARS holders:

• Municipal Issuers. Issuers like cities and toll roads had about $165 billion of the ARS market. Bloomberg estimates that north of $63 billion of municipal ARS have been refinanced, and that ARS holders were bought out without losing any money. About half of the municipal auctions are working again, with interest rates in the 4% to 5% area.

MOST NOTEWORTHY:

• Luminent Mortgage (NYSE: LUM) was downgraded by a host of firms following suspension of its dividend and 10Q filing delay:
  
• UBS cut shares to Sell from Neutral.
  
• Deutsche Bank downgraded Luminent to Sell from Buy.
  
• Friedman Billings and JMP Securities downgraded shares to Underperform from Market Perform. Keefe Bruyette downgraded Luminent to Market Perform from Outperform.

• Morgan Stanley downgraded JetBlue (NASDAQ: JBLU) to Underweight from Equal Weight based on expected competition from Virgin American and their stretched balance sheet.

• Deutsche Bank downgraded shares of Thornburg Mortgage (NYSE: TMA) to Sell from Hold telling accounts it does not believe REIT taxable earnings will be able to support the dividend.

• Deutsche Bank and UBS cut shares of Harmony Gold (NYSE: HMY) to Sell from Neutral after the company lowered its earnings forecast and the CEO resigned...

• Thomas Weisel downgraded F5 Networks (NASDAQ: FFIV) to Market Weight from Overweight.

• AG Edwards cut Nuveen Investments (NYSE: JNC) to Sell from Hold.

• Pali Capital downgraded Clearwire (NASDAQ: CLWR) to Neutral from Buy.

• Matrix USA downgraded PPG Industries (NYSE: PPG) to Buy from Strong Buy.

• Wachovia cut U-Store It Trust (NYSE: YSI) to Underperform from Market Perform.