I just got a letter from my broker: Defeasance of callable bonds.?

As usual, people keep everything secret in Yahoo investing questions so it is difficult to answer the question completely. Like why wouldn't you say "I own a Santa Fe Railroad bond maturing in 2020 with a 6.5% coupon and..." Then you would get an answer with much more detail and much more likely to be right.

Anyway, a defeasance is something like the opposite of a default. It means that the company has bought US Treasury bonds or similar whose future value matches the payments required under the terms of the bond. From the company';s POV, this effectively cancels the debt and with some limitations they can erase the debt from their balance sheet. Your bonds are now as secure as the underlying collateral and you can almost bet your life that the bonds will be called on the first or next call date (a defeasance with uncertainty about the redemption date is disadvantageous to the company).