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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TideGlider who wrote (92545)	10/8/2010 12:46:59 PM
From: tonto	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224718

Bond shorts coming... Jim Casey remembers the fast times when Michael R. Milken ruled Wall Street as the billionaire king of junk bonds. But now even those heady days of the 1980s, when Mr. Milken played kingmaker and rainmaker in the great takeover wars of that era, seem a little tame. The market for high-yield securities, as junk bonds are more politely known in the business, is booming as never before. And Mr. Casey, one of today’s junk-bond kings, is in the midst of a run unlike anything Mr. Milken saw from his X-shaped trading desk in Beverly Hills. Like many blue-chip corporations, companies with less-than-sterling credit are rushing to sell bonds and take advantage of low interest rates. In the first nine months of this year, a record-breaking $275 billion of junk bonds have been issued worldwide, up from $163 billion during the period last year, according to the financial data provider Dealogic, a research company. “Other than 1988 at Drexel, this is the best time I’ve ever seen, and it’s getting better,” said Mr. Casey, who worked at Drexel Burnham Lambert with Mr. Milken and now runs the junk-bond business at JPMorgan Chase. “In high-yield, it’s undeniable that these are the best years that anyone has seen in their career.” Of course the Milken era of the Predators’ Ball ended with the collapse of the mighty Drexel and the market it virtually invented. Mr. Milken today is a philanthropist and businessman, after spending two years in jail.