In the end, Spain reduced the interest rate it was willing to pay on the bonds because of the huge flood of demand.
"Right now is a good time to buy municipal bonds because of the declining interest rate environment," said Robert E. Veasey Jr., president of the Rhode Island chapter of the Financial Planning Association.
stopped short of raising its rating on Japan's bonds because of the large national debt, now about 160percentt of gross domestic product.
Even her accountant, Glenn Cygan, a partner at Blanchfield, Doherty, Peterson Ltd., has tried to persuade her to consider municipal bonds because of the tax savings.
Stockmarkets might be volatile in the short term but over the long term, they should offer a higher return than bonds because of the link to profits growth.
The group, which owns supermarkets, funeral homes, pharmacies and now just 30% of the bank is rewriting the terms of the bond because of the risk of a breach of the covenants, or conditions, attached to the IOU.
Few remember today that in the winter and spring of 1976, the State of New York was shut out of the public markets and was unable to sell its bonds because of the fiscal weakness of the city.
For much of the last 50 years, it was argued that equities should always yield less than government bonds because of the potential for the dividends to grow (whereas bond interest is fixed).
Once the debt ceiling is breached, a legal cloud would hang over any newly issued bonds, because of the risk that the government might refuse to honor those debts as legitimate.
"We have never recommended tobacco bonds or Kraft bonds because of the impossibility of estimating the extent of potential legal liabilities, and we're not recommending them now at weaker levels," said Carol Levenson, director of research at Gimme Credit, an independent research service that analyzes high-grade corporate bonds for institutional investors.
