The pace of U.S. debt defaults ended 2010 below the most optimistic forecasts made a year earlier as the economy recovered faster than expected and the Federal Reserve pumped cash into credit markets, Standard & Poor’s said.

The 12-month trailing default rate reached 3.27 percent in December from 11.1 percent a year earlier, S&P said today in a report. The New York-based company had forecast the rate would likely fall to 5 percent by the end of 2010 or to as low as 4.3 percent under its most optimistic assumptions.

“Although we expected the default rate to decline in 2010, we did not envision it falling as precipitously as it did,” S&P analysts led by Diane Vazza said in the report. “Better-than- expected domestic economic conditions in 2010 helped reinvigorate the U.S. corporate landscape.”