Last month, the Federal Government’s temporary guarantee on money market funds came to an end. Many wondered if the move would cause a flight from money market funds, but a month later, money market accounts are still offering the same interest rates and consumers have largely left their money invested in their money market accounts.

Last year, one money market mutual fund, called the Reserve Fund, did something that’s an anathema to the notion of money market funds by devaluing shares below $1.00 to $0.97. The move by the Reserve Fund set a panic as investors clamored to get their money out of money market funds into federally guaranteed investments. As panic spread, the federal government put out a temporary guarantee on money market funds to prevent a full-on run of those types of accounts.

Ultimately, that guarantee was extended through September 18th of 2009, when the guarantee came to a quiet end.

For the 30 years that money market funds have existed, they have been a very safe place to store money. No one had ever lost money in a money market fund until the Reserve Fund “broke the buck” because of some poor investment choices that the fund managers had made in the now defunct Lehman Brothers.

As the financial crisis has come to an end and some sanity has been restored to the economy, consumers have begun to trust money market accounts as safe investments again, so the federal guarantee expired without much of any consequences.

According to BankRate.com, the national average interest rate that consumers are earning on their funds in savings and money market accounts is currently 1.09%, which is just about what it was before the federal guarantee had ended.