Corporate bonds seem priced like Las Vegas houses, circa 2006. Current yields are puny about 3% on 10-year issues of decent credit quality. Investors who collect them accept the risk of losing money if they sell before maturity, particularly if the economy falters or interest rates rise. Yet, investors continue stuffing cash into corporate bonds because short-term deposits pay nearly nothing and wild stock market swings make shares look unstable.

There's a case to be made for stocks at the moment (prices are too low relative to earnings) and against them (earnings are too high relative to the economy's size). Whichever seems more convincing, stocks look like a better deal than bonds. The earnings yield for the S&P 500 index (that is, earnings as a percentage of the stock market value of America's big companies) stands at more than 6%. The gap between that number and the 10-year Treasury yield is the widest in three decades, The Wall Street Journal recently reported.

The three companies below have earnings yields over 8% and dividend yields that are greater than the benchmark 10-year corporate rate of 3%. Also, these companies boosted their dividends within the past year. Bond investors are typically stuck with fixed payment rates.

Abbott Laboratories

Yield: 3.6%

Drugs with some $40 billion in annual sales are expected to lose patent protection before the end of 2012, and prices for once-lucrative devices like pacemakers and implantable defibrillators are falling fast. Accordingly, shares of many drug and medical equipment companies trade at tiny price-to-earnings ratios. At 12 times earnings, Abbott Laboratories has better-than-average growth prospects in its drug and device businesses, analysts say. Its diverse product mix, which includes nutritional, vision and pet products, helps protect investors against the company's reliance on its blockbuster anti-inflammatory medicine, Humira, which last year accounted for 18% of sales. Earnings per share for Abbott are expected to grow at a double-digit pace this year and next.

Chevron

Yield: 3.8%

Investors swapping out of inflation-indexed bonds should resist the urge to buy gold (which provides no income and has a price that's more closely correlated with doomsday angst than inflation) and perhaps look instead to oil shares. Chevron is expected to increase its oil and gas production by 3.3% this year and a smidgen next year. Crude prices have been rising lately to a three month high on Tuesday which should turn the increased production into plentiful profits. Of course, a sharp economic downturn could drive crude demand lower, but shares of Chevron, at less than nine times earnings, seem adequately discounted for the risk.

Lockheed Martin

Yield: 3.4%

Lockheed Martin is a leading supplier of weapons and spy systems to the Department of Defense. The company is extremely profitable, but with the federal government under pressure to cut spending, few analysts expect sales to grow meaningfully in the coming years. Stockholders might be rewarded just the same. Shares sell for only 10 times earnings, and the company's dividend payment takes up just one-third of yearly earnings, suggesting room for additional dividend increases. Also, Lockheed is expected to spend even more on share repurchases in coming years than on dividends, putting its total yield to investors (dividends plus buybacks) at perhaps 8%.