“This may be the peak before it all falls apart again.”

So said Peter Crane, president of Crane Data, onMonday—the first day of the Crane's Money Fund Symposium, which billsitself as the largest meeting of money-market fund managers andcash investors in the world. He added that he was putting apositive spin on the industry by noting that assets are currently rising in a circumstance whenbalances typically fall. The amount of money in government andprime funds has soared in 2019 to more than $3trillion, the most since the financial crisis, driven by U.S.short-term yields exceeding those of longer-maturing bonds.

On its face, the impetus to park money in ultra-safemoney-market funds makes a lot of sense. After all,equities are at or near all-time highs, corporate-bondspreads have tightened across the board, and the yield curve isinverted, inevitably raising the specter of a coming recession. Infact, I posited in late March that inversionwould most likely accelerate the dash for cash, after noting thatduring January and February, individual investorsbought $39 billion of Treasury bills at auctions, the mostsince at least 2009.