Peter Crane
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"Sir Peter Crane", Royal Society/FRS is a former Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew/Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, London. He is a fellow of the Royal Society, a foreign associate of the United States National Academy of Sciences and a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences since 2002. He was awarded a knighthood on 12 June 2004.

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Normally money market rates just sit there. But because we're in a rare period where the Fed is moving constantly, the rates bear watching. Nobody has to move tomorrow, but you want to monitor the rates and make sure your cash investment is going up. If your cash investment hasn't moved in the last few months, you're in the wrong place.

You really need to know what federal income tax bracket you're in to determine whether tax-free funds offer more of a benefit. As a rule of thumb, anyone who falls in the 36 or 39 percent tax bracket should consider tax-free funds.

We're seeing interest in cash for the first time since 2001, practically, and we expect the interest to only grow as rates continue to rise. Yields are still digesting the Aug. 9 Fed hike and be- ginning to anticipate an almost certain Sept. 20 rise, so we should see yields break through 3 percent and keep going.

The saying goes, it's not bulls, not bears, but chickens who put their money in cash, they park it there and wait for better opportunities. So those chicken investors, and retirees and income investors, have reason to be thrilled about the rates, because for the first time in a while they're going to be paid decently to sit there.

The old saw is the Fed hikes until something breaks. Cash has been the place to be, and it likely will be the place to be over the turn into 2006, but then the question is: Will the Fed be done raising rates at the end of January? Nobody is really sure what's going to happen.

They're getting into a range where, with no risk, their returns are competitive with long-term returns of bonds and equities that are higher, but are much more volatile.

Why shouldn't America, and American children, have the same level of protection that kids do in France and Germany and Poland and Russia and Armenia and Ireland and Norway and a host of other countries?