If a fund broke the buck and was liquidated, shareholders were supposed to receive $1 a share within 30 days.
For example, the Reserve Primary Fund, a large money-market fund, "broke the buck" the next day, leading to severe pressure on other funds.
In 2008, the Reserve Primary Fund broke the buck and created a crisis because it had money in securities backed by Lehman.
The Reserve Primary fund "broke the buck," meaning its net asset value fell significantly below the $1 a share that it was required to maintain.
One of the reasons for the freezing of the money markets is that one fund "broke the buck"—that is, it failed to repay investors at par.
But the greatest fear for a fund manager is that a fund "breaks the buck" — that its share value falls below the stable $1-a-share price that money funds maintain.
But just four years ago, on Sept. 16, 2008, shortly after Lehman Brothers collapsed, the Reserve Fund, the nation's oldest money market fund, "broke the buck" and set off a run on the global money fund industry.
That way the funds will not require the government's deep pockets to stabilize them, as they did in 2008 after one prominent fund "broke the buck" and a run on others ensued.
Both alternatives are intended to prevent the type of destabilizing run that money market funds experienced in 2008 after the share value of one popular money fund "broke the buck" by falling below a dollar a share.
Europe's nervous markets were calmed, at last, on Monday after the European Union and the International Monetary Fund broke their logjam and approved a long-delayed financial rescue package for Greece.
George Soros, whose hedge fund "broke the pound" a dozen years ago, made a billion or so by betting dangerously on currency fluctuation (some of which he's now using to try to break the Bush administration).
