Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is receiving kudos for pulling the economy back from the brink of disaster. While the praise is well deserved, the picture for corporate America still isn’t pretty, judging from a report put out by Diane Vazza at Standard & Poor’s.

Eight global corporate issuers defaulted last week, bringing the 2009 year-to-date tally to 205 issuers—nearly 4x the 54 defaults during the same period in 2008, Vazza wrote. The defaults were largely concentrated in the U.S.

Original post: BusinessWeek – Management IQ