When Buttonwood last inquired, the debt was trading at about 26 cents on the dollar.
And, this Buttonwood will add, in most of them equities are far from richly valued.
They even went up after being tipped by Buttonwood last autumn as a wonderful investment opportunity.
So there are a number of questions, to which Buttonwood has no ready answers.
All true, but Buttonwood can't help feeling nonetheless that many pundits have cried sheep once too often.
Buttonwood is all for diversifying portfolios, and thinks art is at least as jolly as pork bellies.
Still, a phone call to Mr Nachmany found him in bouyant mood with ready answers to Buttonwood's queries.
But no one, to Buttonwood's knowledge, believes that higher oil prices are a net plus for economic activity.
No Arabist, Buttonwood probably knows as much as most about Saudi Arabia, which is to say very little.
Buttonwood has absolutely no sympathy for any of Russia's oligarchs, who have looted their way to extraordinary wealth.
Buttonwood can't help but feel they should have done a class in finance.
However, the more nervous, Buttonwood among them, worry about the situation in America.
And, of course, there is Buttonwood, who is still waiting for house prices in Chiswick to fall to levels he can afford.
ECONOMIST: Everyone’s making money except the customers | The
Both arguments strike Buttonwood as odd, but the second is of arresting awfulness.
When even an old regulatory chum says that he cannot see any problems looming, Buttonwood's warning bells start to ring.
Just a few metres from where the buttonwood once stood, there is a coffee shop for traders thriving once again.
Buttonwood's hunch, though, is that stock and bond markets are not so much delinking as linking in a new way.
This list of problems is the reason why it is so hard for Buttonwood to join the bullish consensus for 2011.
Buttonwood laid it out, as we have here many times at Forbes.
The Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 was a murderous event, but the world pushed on and many areas recovered quickly (see Buttonwood).
ECONOMIST: Disasters are about people and planning, not nature��s pomp
JPMorgan and the most recent Economist Buttonwood column emphasize that stocks have not really performed all the well in periods of rock-bottom interest rates.
To which cautious view Buttonwood would like to add his twopennyworth.
But consumer demand is clearly picking up, companies will start investing more at some point, and Japanese shares, Buttonwood dares aver, have further to rise.
It is both as a sign of Chinese demand and of Japanese reflation that Buttonwood is interested in the price of H beams in Tokyo.
Buttonwood has a nasty feeling that something worse is in store.
That, at least, is a sentiment with which Buttonwood can concur.
Buttonwood's friend has less than a year to realise his bet.
Buttonwood's first and second laws suggest this is unlikely to last, not least because worries about America's jobless recovery now seem about as relevant as fears about deflation.
Actually, Buttonwood can't help feeling, gold's history counts against it.
应用推荐