I have firsthand knowledge of this market. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to buy bonds like this for yourself if you are not an institutional investor.
If that's so how did NPR go talk to this guy in Kansas and get one? They don't have a lot of money, and they aren't a bank. I bet this guy in Kansas is getting a lot of phone calls like this one.
It's not impossible, just hard. There's no exchange you can go to, and dealers will generally not work with you if you're a small fry.
In NPR's case, I'd say: (a) it looks like they worked directly with the seller, not with a bank/broker/dealer, and (b) their foundation has $250MM of assets, so they're not exactly a small fry (http://www.npr.org/about/statements/fy2008/fy08nprfoundation... [pdf]).
It sounded to me that they just went in on it with the guy from Kansas. They bought it for however much, and NPR chipped in $1000, which is why they say if they keep getting ~$140 monthly payments through to November, they'd break even.
there was some talk of selling toxic stuff from TARP participants to private investors. IIRC Blackrock and/or PIMCO were even supposed to construe ETFs that pretty much anyone in the world could buy. Unfortunately banks realized pretty soon that they themselves can make a lot of money by cherry picking and selling those assets, so financial lobby killed this effort quickly. That's my understanding anyway.
Easy. Just buy a junk bond. A REIT maybe if you specifically want a building mortgage (as opposed to a company borrowing money).
But it's not a good idea unless you are very experienced (or have someone very experienced helping you).
Otherwise you're pretty much guaranteed to loose money.
Actually no broker will talk to you unless you are a "sophisticated investor", which is another way of saying "has a lot of money", but also you need to have been investing for at least a few years.
If you have an account with a high end broker (e.g. the private wealth management division of an investment bank), they'll usually let you buy them. You have to meet a pretty high net worth threshold to open that sort of account though.
