19 percent of junk bonds is in the energy sector. The average yield on those bonds is around 14 percent now.
FT Times had a piece on the collapse of highly leveraged loans, particularly hit shale oil producers.
It is at multi year highs.
Similar article:
A Global Chill in Commodity Demand Hits America’s Heartland
In China and other emerging markets, growth is waning and demand
for the raw materials that drive the global economy has dried up.
GRANITE CITY, Ill. — A thousand miles south of this gritty steel town on the Mississippi River, West Texas oil rigs have shuddered to a halt. Seven hundred miles north, mines in the Iron Range of Minnesota have been stilled.
The drilling rigs, with their deep underground pipes, once consumed much of the steel that Granite City’s blast furnaces could produce, while the mines supplied the raw material.
So now, more than 2,000 workers at the mammoth United States Steel plant not far from St. Louis are waiting to see if they will be next. This month, the company warned them it might be forced to idle the plant. Layoffs could begin around Christmas.
Granite City may be waiting, but a chill in economic activity is already evident across a broad swath of the nation’s heartland stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border, as prices of commodities sink.
Whether it is roustabouts and other oil field workers in Texas and North Dakota, miners in Minnesota, farmers in Iowa, or heavy equipment makers and sellers in Illinois, the reason for the fear is the same: a sudden plunge in demand for commodities.
Continue reading the main story
Related Coverage
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The China Factor: China Falters, and the Global Economy Is Forced to AdaptAUG. 26, 2015
Edited by Rogerdodger, 26 November 2015 - 11:30 AM.
