Now that flight to quality has turned into a stampede, and all stock markets look suspect to investors, while only the safest bonds seem attractive.

The thinking is that an interest rate associated with a safe bond is appropriate because the pensions themselves are supposed to be safe.

But what are the nervous to do when the safest bonds around - benchmark Treasuries - have soared in price?

Cash is flowing into safe bonds paying low interest rates, simply because investors fear more stock plunges.

He said also that concern about possible European bond defaults is triggering a flight to safer bonds.

It is characterized as the safest bond, with the lowest interest rate.

Seeking yields higher than the meager rates offered on safer bonds, investors piled into junk-bond mutual funds.

The corporate bond market also weakened in 2000 after some household-name corporations ran into financial troubles that led to downgrades of their supposedly safe bonds.

Funds leaning toward safer bonds, by contrast, fared far better.

Everything else tends to go into very safe bonds.