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The Postal Service next week will usher in another round of price changes.

The most visible change will be an increase of 1 cent for mailing first-class letters, to 42 cents.

Other changes include a zone-based pricing system on Express Mail, which will help customers mailing to nearby locations, modest savings for some people who use Priority Mail and a weight-based system on Parcel Return Service, which will benefit people who send lighter packages.

Do you care about these changes? I'll be writing a story, probably for the May 10 issue of the Arizona Republic, and I'd like to get some public feedback. If you  have an opinion, post a blog reply or send me an e-mail message. Be sure to include your name and city of residence.

Thanks, Russ

First stocks, then real estate. Now money market mutual funds?

If you didn't notice, a lot of cash had been piling up in money-market mutual funds lately. In fact, global money-fund assets hit a record $5 trillion in the third quarter, with U.S. money-fund assets  topping $3.5  trillion in early April.

But investors are starting to pull out their cash, reducing money-fund assets by $118 billion over just the past three weeks, reports Money Fund Intelligence newsletter, which speculates that "the largest cash buildup in history may be at an end."

Several factors seem to be working against money funds right now. The stock market has rallied and fears of a sharp recession seem to have eased. Investors thus might be feeling more confident about paring their cash levels  and putting those funds to work in riskier assets.

Also, money-fund yields have been dropping with Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts. Crane Data, which publishes the Money Fund Intelligence newsletter, cites a 2.08 percent average yield on money funds at the end of April. That's down from nearly 5 percent roughly a year ago.

If we truly are seeing a cyclical peak in money-fund assets, that shouldn't cause alarm. Unlike the bursting of other bubbles, this trend should prove orderly and benign.

Zillow's surveys of home prices in metro Phoenix are a little more upbeat than other indexes and reports. 

Zillow reports home prices are down almost 16 percent in metro Phoenix during the past year. The Case-Shiller index reports the price decline in metro Phoenix for that period is closer to 21 percent.

Many Valley homeowners might find the online property valuation firm's estimates of the value of their house are a little overly optimistic too.

Zillow reports the median home price for metro Phoenix is $220,000, which is what the Realty Studies center at Arizona State University has reported for the past two months.

 Comments in this morning’s story on the deportations of seven illegal immigrants who attended a church retreat last month makes the Yavapai County sheriff’s officers sound like storm troopers.

 “We are brothers who went there to praise God, and they treated us like delinquents,” Manuel Maldonado, pastor of Iglesia Cristiana Agape in west Phoenix, told The Republic’s Daniel Gonzalez. Maldonado was among nine detained that morning and is fighting deportation.

Now a national Latino church group is pulling out the well-worn race card and calling on the presidential candidates to condemn the deportations.

 "If they were all White, and they were making noise and they were celebrating with Celtic music and the local authorities were to come in, would they have asked for proof of citizenship? My inclination is absolutely not," said Samuel Rodriguez Jr., president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference.

So, if people are disturbing the peace at 6 a.m. and the cops are called and those who were making all the noise pull out Mexican IDs, it’s wrong to ask about their legal status?

I would agree with Rodriguez if this group was singled out for no good reason, rousted from their sleeping bags, say. But according to a sheriff’s spokesman, deputies were responding to a noise complaint and it’s standard procedure in such cases to ask for identification. So, yeah, I guess I would expect that if a group of Irishmen were disturbing the peace at 6 a.m., they, too, would be asked for ID and if they had only Irish IDs that they would be asked questions.

Why is that wrong?