The muni bond insurance market has decreased 98% since 2007 and the old AAA guaranteed muni bond has become a virtually extinct species.

FORBES: Why You Need Active Management Of Munis

Insurance companies with big variable-annuity books may drop their annual guaranteed rates, but their bond portfolios will appreciate.

FORBES: How to surf the yield curve

Insurance companies with big variable annuity books may drop their annual guaranteed rates, but their bond portfolios will appreciate.

FORBES: Market Trends: How to surf the yield curve

If you buy an insured bond, and the issuer defaults, you're guaranteed to get all the money that's coming to you.

NPR: Credit Woes Squeeze Bond Insurance Business

Hence her refusal to endorse unlimited bond buying by the ECB and her dismissal of jointly guaranteed eurobonds, an idea touted again this week by the European Commission.

ECONOMIST: Angela Merkel and the euro

The firms hoped capital gains on shares and property would close the gap between the interest rates they had guaranteed and those they could earn on their bond portfolios.

ECONOMIST: Japanese insurance

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, they offered individuals annuities that paid guaranteed interest rates much higher than were available in the bond market.

ECONOMIST: Japanese insurance

Nor have bond markets recovered as much as the number of recent sovereign and sovereign-guaranteed issues might suggest.

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