The Wall Street Journal [subscription required] reports that we need to learn about another acronym thanks to Wall Street's financial engineers whose fragile financial instruments keep blowing up. Today's explosion is in variable-rate demand notes (VRDN) -- which let issuers borrow for long periods -- but at short-term interest rates. Like auction-rate securities (ARSs), interest payments adjust on a weekly or even daily basis. The difference is that securities firms sell VRDNs at whatever interest rate meets the market's demand.

This is a huge market -- $500 billion, or 52% bigger than the $330 billion ARS market. I've been asked what I thought the next shoe to drop would be after the ARS blowup. And I'm happy to report that I said I had no idea. I had never heard of VRDNs before this morning. But the market for VRDNs is freezing up -- just like the ARS market.

Specifically, some VRDN auctions failed -- hitting some municipalities with sharply higher interest because dealers of the debt are having trouble selling it. Last week, rates on $300 million of California's variable-rate demand notes rose to 8.25% from 2% the previous week. As with the ARS market, this freeze up will lead to more unpleasant surprises for holders of VRDNs -- like the one I posted on yesterday in which a journalist who thought his ARS investment was as liquid as a money market fund discovered his funds were frozen.

The latest $500 billion explosion in Wall Street's bowl of alphabet soup originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.