SINCE MARCH 1951, the corporate bond market has reasserted its traditional claim on the time and attention of experienced analysts. For most of the preceding eighteen years, a specialist in the behavior of corporate bond prices was in about as much demand as a margin clerk at a Cabinet meeting. The 1933-51 era produced the peg, the open-mouth operation, and the flourishing of the free rider in the course of the greatest bull market in bonds of our modern financial history. The infrequent interruptions of the rising trend of prices were of strictly modest proportions as the one-way street led to the peaks of 1946. In this environment, an analyst's views of the basic forces at work seemed like quotations from an out-of-date textbook. The man with the practical help for buyers and sellers of corporate issues was the man who could accurately guess the specific techniques with which the Treasury and the Federal Reserve were about to pursue their easymoney objectives. To illustrate, when corporations stepped up their demands for long-term capital in 1948 to new high levels, the problem of where rates would go was not an analytical one. Instead, the key question was whether the authorities would continue to place a ceiling on rates, no matter how many long Governments they had to buy at pegged prices. The momentous decisions in the making during late 1950 and early 1951 turned not so much on an appraisal of market forces as on divergent views about credit policy and differences among personalities.