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The city of Pittsburgh announced a plan to sell municipal bonds directly online for the first time, but the move was met by skepticism among investors and underwriters alike. “We as a seller are going directly to our buyers and eliminating the middleman,” said Mayor Thomas Murphy. “It is about taking risks, which generally, governments aren’t willing to do.”

Yet managers of municipal bond funds were leery of eliminating the middleman in a market in which pricing and credit information is notoriously hard to come by. “I’m still a big believer that you can derive a lot of value by talking to dealers,” said John Mousseau, director of municipal bond management at Lord Abbett & Co.