About a year ago, our country’s credit rating was lowered for the first time in history by Standard & Poor’s. The reason? “Political brinksmanship” in the US was blocking attempts to raise the debt ceiling and/or cut the budget deficit.

Fast forward about 18 months, and little has changed—politicians are still making hay out of our debt crisis with few credible plans for addressing the issue. As a result, the US has a debt-to- GDP ratio of 102.9 percent, the eighth-highest level in the world, according to the International Monetary Fund. By contrast, the typical developed country has a debt-to-GDP level of around 70 percent.

Even as we climb that mountain of debt, US Treasury bonds pay next to nothing: 30-year bond yields are currently about 2.8 percent, just above an all-time low of 2.5 percent. One can’t help but wonder about the sustainability of the current state of affairs. At some point, investors are bound to demand significantly higher yields, making Treasury bonds a lot less attractive for current investors.

At the same time, the US dollar has been in a secular decline over the past decade compared to a basket of global currencies. However, it has enjoyed a renaissance of sorts recently given its role as a safe-haven currency.

Our high national debt and low interest rates serve to make the dollar much less attractive compared to higher-yielding international currencies. Consider that even the euro has made gains against the dollar recently, despite that region’s crisis.

The case for emerging-market bonds. By contrast, the debt-to-GDP ratio was recently only 20 percent, on average, for emerging markets. After the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s and their own long history of boom and bust cycles, most emerging-market governments got the message and put their fiscal and monetary houses in order. On top of that, yields on emerging market government debt are currently 6 percent to 12 percent. And a number of emerging market currencies have made gains over the past six months against the US dollar.

Given that backdrop, Market Vectors Emerging Markets Local Currency Bond ETF (NYSE: EMLC) is becoming an increasingly attractive option for fixed-income investors.

The fund holds 186 bonds issued by emerging-market governments in their local currencies. South Africa, Brazil, Poland and Mexico currently top the portfolio’s asset allocation, followed by 10 other countries in Asia, South America and Europe. As a result, the fund provides exposure to currencies ranging from the Russian ruble to the Indonesian rupiah.

Additionally, nearly two-thirds of the fund’s holdings are rated as investment grade, and there hasn’t been a downgrade of any of the fund’s constituent nations in about a decade. That’s a far cry from what we’ve seen in the developed world just over the last year, as a bevy of nations have seen their credit ratings slashed.

The fund currently yields about 5 percent, a nice contrast to US bond funds.