Bond Traders, Your New Government Is Apple

A funny thing happened on the way to economic growth: Top-rated corporate bonds increasingly became interchangeable with sovereign debt.

This is strange because companies are not governments. They don't collect taxes or print money. But big companies like Apple and Anheuser-Busch InBev arguably have much better balance sheets than many countries, and some central bankers have started buying corporate bonds to stimulate their regions' economies.

Besides, the company bonds offer a smidgen more yield than the sovereign debt of developed countries. So it's not surprising that yields on corporate debt globally have dropped to a record low of 2.2 percent.