Savers can breathe a temporary sigh of relief now that government coverage on money market funds has been extended through Sept. 18, 2009.

Money-market funds have long been considered just about the safest place to stash cash. During the nearly 30 years of their existence, no one had ever lost a single penny in a money market fund.

Until last September.

At that time, Clark took a number of gut-wrenching calls from listeners who had money in one particular fund called the Reserve Fund. The Reserve Fund made silly bets with people's money and lost big in the failure of Lehman Brothers.

As a result, the Reserve Fund was forced to do something that's anathema to money market funds -- they "broke the buck" by devaluing shares below $1.

Money market funds don't have FDIC insurance. So the federal government had to set up an emergency guarantee program to quell people's fears. Their goal was to prevent a run on money market funds. That initial guarantee had been scheduled to expire later this month.

The consumer champ vividly remembers one call that came in last September from a listener whose father had retired on the $270,000 he had in the Reserve Fund. Suddenly, that $270,000 was marked down to zero when the Reserve Fund started freezing people's accounts before the government stepped in.

Your money market funds remain completely safe with the extended government protection. The industry itself has proposed new guidelines that should prevent a similar calamity from happening again. Of course, it's very important that the procedures go in place by September 2009 when the government protection ends.

By the way, Clark never his took savings out of money markets. That wasn't necessarily the wisest choice, but he firmly believes this whole Reserve Fund episode was a freak occurrence and won't happen again.