By the end of May 2013 the value of the Australian dollar relative to the US dollar had plummeted from above parity to below US96 cents. This followed the decision by the Reserve Bank board to cut the official cash rate to a historic low at its May meeting, and Goldman Sachs telling the world that its top trade was shorting the Aussie dollar.At the same time, financial markets began to fear that the US Federal Reserve would soon start winding back quantitative easing. There was also concern that the Abenomics experiment in aggressive monetary easing in Japan may get out of control.This had Japanese equity and bond markets roiling by early June. In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 fell four per cent in the second week and had dropped by 9.8 per cent over May, wiping-out virtually all of the gains since the start of the year. It all started to sound very familiar. A global move to start unwinding investments in high yielding, higher risk assets was underway.Australian dollar denominated assets were suddenly "on the nose", with kangaroo and major bank bonds among them. International investors, unable to see a floor for the Aussie dollar, were dumping the high yield stocks that only a month earlier had looked so attractive. The banks and Telstra, among others, were hammered.In June 2013, there was virtually no public issuance of corporate bonds in the domestic market - private placement activity saw just $155 million issued. At the time, the Aussie iTraxx index hit a peak of 149 basis points, well off its low of 95 bps on May 8, 2013.Major bank credit spreads have been trying to recover ever since.