Municipal Bonds
State and local government must finance their own capital investment
projects like roads, schools, bridges, sewage plants, and airports. These
projects need financing. These local governments usually issue municipal
bonds for the purpose. New issues of municipal bonds are generally bought by
investment bankers and resold to commercial banks, insurance firms and high-
income individuals. They are not, however, as saleable as corporate bonds.
Mortgage-backed Bonds
Individual mortgages are non-negotiable, not liquid, nor suited to trading
in the secondary markets. As a result, mortgage companies and banks group
mortgages into a standard million block group and issued securities backed up
by these mortgages. Such securities issued came to be called mortgage-
backed securities, which are usually in the form of bonds.
These are usually sold to pension funds or life insurance companies. The
mortgage houses or banks continue to collect the payments on the mortgages
and pass them to the owner of the security in the form of interest on the bonds
held.