By The Star-Ledger Continuous News Desk

March 19, 2010, 9:43AM

Steve Hockstein/BloombergFile photo of Prudential Financial Inc, of Newark, the second-largest U.S. life insurer on May 12, 2009.

U.S. insurers, holders of more than $2.2 trillion in corporate debt, bought the bonds at the fastest pace in five years in 2009, taking advantage of a market that Warren Buffett said was “raining gold," Bloomberg reports.

Firms issued $1.2 trillion of dollar-denominated bonds in 2009, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s the most since at least 1999, and a 42 percent jump from 2008, when Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s bankruptcy prompted investors to withhold debt financing.

The corporate-debt rally helped insurers including MetLife Inc. and Prudential Financial Inc. to recover capital lost in the housing and stock market slumps of 2008 and early 2009, Bloomberg said. Life insurer inflows were more than eight times those of property- casualty companies in 2009. Buffett, the property-casualty industry’s most visible executive, lamented that he didn’t invest enough in the debt.

Corporate and municipal bonds “were ridiculously cheap relative to U.S. Treasuries” in early 2009, Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s chief executive officer, said in an annual letter to investors on Feb. 27. “Big opportunities come infrequently. When it’s raining gold, reach for a bucket, not a thimble.”