<p style="line-height: 18.9091px;"><span style="line-height: 18.9091px;">Investment grade debt is also slowing down.</span></p> <p style="line-height: 18.9091px;">The private equity markets have begun experiencing a major slowdown in new deal activity, due to a contraction in the market for high-yield debt. More specifically, banks are having a tough time placing such bonds, which even has caused some already agreed-upon deals to be delayed and/or restructured (e.g., The Carlyle Group&rsquo;s&nbsp;purchase of data storage business Veritas from Symantec).</p> <p style="line-height: 18.9091px;">Now, things might be about to get even worse.</p>