In the case of Sentinel, it was in their investment objects and allowed investments ( see this article for more info - http://seekingalpha.com/article/44695-dur

In the case of Sentinel, it was in their investment objects and allowed investments ( see this article for more info - http://seekingalpha.com/article/44695-duration-mismatch-at-sentinel http://seekingalpha.com/article/44695-duration-mismatch-at-s... ). If you paid close attention to what they were actually investing in, you might have seen that the prospectus wasn't telling the right story. In all honesty though, I don't think people would have invested that much differently had they known. People are so used to FDIC insured bank accounts, they don't realize that maturity mismatching in an uninsured account will always lead to bank run. Of course, because of the perception that the government was going to insure the accounts, the government actually did have to insure the accounts. So no one has actually lost money in the money market funds. It was all paid for by the inflation tax.