My business has maintained a database of all corporate and municipal bond defaults since 1982. Over the years it has grown to include defaults by 4,400 issuers on $560 billion in debt. That's a record of failure that clearly should concern investors, even if defaults have been relatively few in the last several years.rnOne particular reason to worry right now: Corporate bond defaults come in waves, not a continuous stream. They happen when banks cut off companies' lines of credit, and that usually happens when there's a recession. That's because the economic downturn reduces the value of a company's assets and thus reduces the collateral that banks can fall back on to recover loan principal.
展开▼
