Eagle Asset Sees Hope in Fixed-Income

November 24, 2008

The credit crunch that has left many bond funds reeling isn't causing James Camp to lose any sleep. This managing director and fixed-income portfolio manager at Eagle Asset Management said that the crisis that brought down venerable Lehman Brothers investment bank and that forced the government to activate a $700 billion financial system bail-out program has produced 'the best environment, for what I do, than I've seen in 20 years.' Comparing recent financial industry experiments with products like credit default swaps and other creative derivatives to the new CERN super-collider particle accelerator's experiments seeking to reproduce the conditions of the 'Big Bang,' Camp said, 'There was some concern that the accelerator might create a black hole that would pull in surrounding matter. Wall Street investment banks were engaged in similar experiments over the last decades. Instead of atoms, though, they accelerated mortgage assets, leverage and securitization into each other to create a 'financial matter black hole' that has pulled down domestic and now global economies.'

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