On Sat, 3 Nov 2001, Rakesh Bhandari wrote: > Fred, not quite sure of what one is to make of this: despite the US feds > efforts to decrease both short term and now long term rates, junk debt > borrowing costs have risen considerably; the spread over comparable Treasurys > has risen about 3x since mid 1998. There has been a squeeze on the supply of > credit of highly leveraged businesses and companies--see WSJ 10/29/01, p. C1. Rakesh, this seems pretty clearly to result from increasing concern about the world economy and the prospects for survival of high-risk firms. I imagine those spreads will continue to rise. Fred
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sun Dec 02 2001 - 00:00:05 EST