So forgive me if this has been covered, but has anyone looked into this? NPR was doing a story on people buying securities for pennies on the dollar, betting that the monthly income would last long enough before everyone in it defaulted. I would think since these things are slices of hundreds (or thousands?) of mortgages they wouldn't all fail, and this might be an interesting play. If we still believe in efficient markets (ha ha) I guess the answer would be "you get what you pay for" but I seem to remember quite a few people making some decent profits off of junk bonds after they crashed and were stigmatized. Any thoughts? Any idea how to buy these efficiently/effectively?