I have been wondering about bonds myself, especially in regards to retirees and near retirees. If you're already in bonds, then you are doing pretty well. However, the return on junk bonds is now around around 4-5% (generally speaking) so in order to get what used to be what would have been considered a more "normal" yield in years past, you have to invest in risky debt or earn basically nothing. Or even lose money since I don't think the governments inflation numbers matches reality all that well. Gasoline is cheaper, but if you include the things people actually spend money on, housing, health care, education, food, everything has become markedly more expensive beyond what government figures show.
I know if I was about to pull the trigger or even within a few years of FIRE, I would not be wanting to put my index funds/etfs into bonds yielding ~1.5%. This is a real quandary. I'm curious how others are dealing with this. Just adding more work years to make up the difference??
I have read a bit about foreign debt. India was paying 7-8% on their government debt. I have not put much effort into figuring if/how you can invest in this.