In journalism, they call it burying the lede, or focusing on the wrong piece of information in an article. Reuters does that here, saying that S&P expects junk bond defaults to rise to a 6-year high of 7.6% next year from 2.68% today. Shouldn’t the story be that 15-months into the greatest credit crunch since the Great Depression, junk bond default rates are below3%. 97% of high-yield bond issuers are current while investment name credits like Lehman and AIG no longer exist in their original forms? That’s pretty remarkable, and a rare ray of hope, against a bleak economic landscape.