By Michael Snyder, on February 14th, 2016

Did you know that there are more than 1.8 trillion dollars worth of junk bonds outstanding in the United States alone?  With interest rates at record lows all over the world in recent years, investors that were starving for a decent return poured hundreds of billions of dollars into high yield debt (also known as junk bonds).  This created a giant bubble, but at first everything seemed to be going fine.  Defaults were very low and most investors were seeing a nice return.  But then the price of oil started crashing and the global economy began to slow down significantly.  Energy company debt makes up somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of the junk bond market, and the credit rating downgrades for that sector are coming fast and furious.  But it isn’t just the energy industry that is seeing a massive wave…