From www.Fundsupermart.com comes a new offering: BondSupermart.com (or Bond@FSM). Now we have another avenue to buy government and corporate bonds directly without having to go to the banks. I like FSM's application interface. They tend to spot pretty clean and intuitive user interfaces. I was initially pretty excited as I thought they were offering these bonds within reach of retail investors. Alas, not quite. They still require that the bonds be purchased in lots of at least 250,000 units (~$250K) per bond (typically). So it is available to retail, but would require hefty investments to buy into. Nonetheless, it is an option. Need to understand their sales charges. These are documented on the website. Saliva drip drip. For an investment of $250,000 at 4% (assuming yield to maturity of 4%), that's $10,000 per year. There are several perpetuals from blue chip companies. Wish there was some way ......