Junk bonds have been around, in one form or another, ever since the 1800s.

Junk bonds provide a total return of at least 10 percent, she said.

I didn't issue junk bonds and put people out of work.

But you cannot say exactly what a junk bond is?

Junk bonds today are a critical part of the world's financial scene.

Prices of many junk bonds were down at least a point, or $10 for every $1,000 face amount.

Now, 20 percent of the fund is in junk bonds.

The $1-a-share increase would raise the value of the junk bonds to $9.

Last week was not a happy one in the "junk bond" market.

Many began selling a year ago, when they held junk bonds with a face value of $14.4 billion.

Pension, insurance and mutual funds all own high-yield debt.

Over all, $183.3 billion in high-yield debt was issued in 2006, according to Thomson, up 52 percent from a year before.

And interest rates on high-yield corporate debt - what we used to call junk bonds - are at their highest levels in nearly a decade.

In fact, some analysts contend that prices on high-yield debt have fallen to bargain levels, with the average yield at 13 percent.

In 2007 the hospital group issued more than $750 million in high-yield debt, the largest junk bond offering by a nonprofit health care concern.

The purchase of Marshall Field's, a department store company, for $1.1 billion in 1990 also added high-yield debt to the company's balance sheet.

The alternative is to attack "junk" financing itself, capping the deductibility of interest on high-yield debt.

First, many of those deals depended upon financing through high-yield debt, and the chaos in the financial markets has caused, a flight to quality.

Standard & Poor's forecasts defaults on 11 percent of high-yield debt in 2002, as struggling companies burn through their cash.

The issue, along with income from the property sales, will be used to redeem preferred stock as well as pay off high-yield debt.