Sold, at bargain prices: bonds from New Jersey, where the transportation fund is going broke, the pension system’s shortfall is growing and the economy has been slow to recover from the recession. The $131 million deal Wednesday was the state’s first sale of general-obligation debt since 2014, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The securities, with stronger credit ratings than those New Jersey typically sells, were priced with a top yield of 2.36 percent for those due in 7 years, some 0.9 percentage point more than benchmark debt, after the size of the offering was cut back by about $10 million. The state also borrowed $98 million through the building authority at yields as high as 4.1 percent on securities that mature in 2030, almost two percentage points over top-rated debt. “There are not too many situations out there besides Illinois that investors are getting paid right now for those risks and that potentially bumpy ride,” said Paul Brennan, a senior vice president in Chicago at Nuveen Asset Management, which oversees about $100 billion of municipal bonds.
