Nashville News Blog

Shouldn't you always be suspicious of a dude who calls himself "Bones"?

Now that we've accused them of unfairly deflavorizing our fair city, a belated kudos is in order for the Tennessean.

On Sunday, reporter Brad Schrade profiled Charles G. "Bones" Seivers, president and CEO of the Tennessee Municipal Bond Fund, one of the state's biggest lenders to local government. Schrade's investigation revealed that Seivers' fund won't disclose his income nor his possible conflicts of interest, sometimes charges customers (i.e. cities) hidden fees and has some incredibly shady pay-for-play arrangement with Bank of America.

What's more, during his investigation, Schrade found that TMBF had overcharged Nashville and Murfreesboro to the tune of nearly $40,000. A fact which Sievers first disputed before cutting the two cities checks. (And BTW, lest you think it a little weird that a lender would just return money to a client without them asking for it, rest easy: Metro finance director Rich Riebeling thought the same thing and promises he's making them redot their i's and recross their t's as we speak.)

So obviously bonds are incredibly unsexy. But Schrade's article makes us two-for-two when it comes to monthly revelations about municipal lending in Tennessee.

In April there was the New York Times article on Seivers' biggest competitor, Memphis-based Morgan Keegan, who for the past decade or so have been practicing the art of deceptive haberdashery, wearing multiple hats as sellers, advisers and consultants to small towns who are now going bankrupt on account of the risky bonds sold to them.

So what's going on here? Will this be the last we hear on Seivers and Morgan Keegan? Or is Tennessee, the second-largest bond trading outpost outside of New York, headed for another golden age of scurrilous rich guys like the infamous "bond daddies" of the '60's and '70's, the notorious group of lenders who used underhanded tactics to sell tax-exempt bonds to the elderly and lived large off the profits?

(Or Option C, is all of this too complicated and uninteresting to hold your attention and we should just stick with fainting goats? Discuss.)