by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
Nobody knew what would trigger the next financial crisis, but just about everyone knew it would involve the record pile of corporate debt. And so it happened. Now the Fed fixed it…
Something spectacular happened in April, despite the gut-wrenching phenomenon that 30 million people lost their jobs in the United States: In late February and early March, credit markets were freezing up and corporate bonds, particularly junk bonds and the lowest rungs of investment-grade bonds, were in the process of imploding. But then in late March and in all of April, companies issued record amounts of bonds under blistering demand from once again yield-chasing institutional investors.