Yet the fact remains: In late 1989 and 1990 the junk bond market was in panic.
Part of their concern is tied to the explosion in the high-risk or junk bond market.
We saw this vicious cycle in junk bonds after Mike Milken was forced to suspend his activities as the market maker for the junk bond market.
The junk bond market has lost much of its allure, as the SPDR Barclays Capital High Yield Bond ETF ( JNK) has had a rough few months.
Sure, the international debt problems worry me and the junk bond market may have gotten ahead of itself right now, but I am optimistic that the US stock market still offers value.
When the junk-bond market subsequently recovered, Executive Life's former policyholders saw none of the benefit.
The markets have been abuzz with rumours about losses at some banks (mainly investment banks) in the high-yield (junk) bond market recently.
Supporting this view is the fact that new issuance in the junk-bond market has more or less ceased, regardless of the terms offered.
Mr Lee helped create an Asian junk-bond market from scratch, and Peregrine built a reputation for its skill at raising cash for fast-growing companies.
Ironically for a conference bearing the name of the father of junk-bond market, the Milken jamboree was overflowing with financiers expressing concern about cheap debt.
WSJ: Current Account: Cheap Junk Leads to Expensive Mistakes
In recent months, the decline of the junk-bond market has accelerated.
ECONOMIST: Signs of a crunch in America's markets for credit
Financing is cheap on loans used to finance leverage buyouts: The average yield in the junk-bond market is at its lowest level since October 2007, falling to 8.7%.
Mr Pitt succeeded then in shifting the focus of a far-reaching probe into insider trading away from his client and on to Michael Milken, the founding father of the junk-bond market.
One possible explanation is that venture capitalists had much better investment opportunities available to them in the 1990s, as the technology revolution gathered speed, whereas buy-out funds were badly hit by the collapse of the junk-bond market in the late 1980s and the recession of the early 1990s.
Capital markets have ballooned: think, for example, of the development of the junk-bond and asset-backed market in the 1980s.
Moreover, bank regulators are becoming tougher with banks about loose lending practices, which could mean that less credit is available at just the same time as the bond market is shut in sharp contrast to the last junk-bond freeze in 1998.
This firm went bust in 1991, when the market value of its junk-bond portfolio collapsed.
To illustrate that it is baseless, he points to what he considers another great firm unfairly maligned by its critics as arrogant: Drexel Burnham Lambert, a freewheeling investment bank that shot from nowhere to market prominence in the junk-bond boom of the 1980s.
Enstar is perhaps best remembered as providing the smoking gun testimony that put former junk bond king Michael Milkin in federal prison for manipulating the bond market.
The only emerging market nations to see downgrades or credit outlook changes to negative were in the junk bond space, and some corporates.
FORBES: "Third World" No More as Emerging Markets Upgraded, Developed Markets Downgraded
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