The stock market may be acting like the recovery has started, but in the world of real corporate earnings, corporate defaults are happening at a larger and faster rate.
A record total of 82 US nonfinancial companies defaulted during the second quarter, led by 16 in the media and entertainment sector, 15 in autos, and 15 in natural resources. These 82 defaults accounted for a collective $254 billion in outstanding debt, dramatically overshadowing the 30 defaults totaling $52.9 billion in debt during the first quarter. By contrast, for all of 2008, 69 issuers defaulted on about $102 billion in debt.
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Standard & Poor’s Global Fixed Income Research (GFIR) expects corporate defaults to be concentrated in the second and third quarters of 2009. GFIR forecasts U.S. speculative-grade nonfinancial corporate defaults to peak in the first quarter of 2010, and then inch lower to 13.9% by mid-2010.
fun, fun
I need it in historical context, say raw numbers, %'s from 1945 to 2009 or from 1995 to 2009.
But it does seem the conservative rant has a major point (as most noted by the smaller banks just left out in the cold, holding defaulting mortgages with no recourse, while Zombie banks get saved, regardless of their piss poor management and the actual real amount of never recoverable liabilities)..
anywho, the major conservative rant being U.S. government is ignoring small business and it's crashing and burning.