Basically, until they rolled them up you could have a stable (if low rate of return) income denominated in Napoleonic war debt, if you wanted it, right up into the modern (1980s) era
[edit: actually consols == consolidated fund == prior consolidation of these historic debts. gilts were from time to time issued, like Churchills '27 issue for the WW1 debt ]
Apparently there was a weird set of loans the UK took from the US during WW1 where the US put a moratorium on repayments during the Great Depression, and then loan payments never restarted:
> These loans remain in limbo. The UK Government's position is this: "Neither the debt owed to the United States by the UK nor the larger debts owed by other countries to the UK have been serviced since 1934, nor have they been written off."
That and a bunch of other interesting things about the history of the UK debt are in http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4757181.stm
It was only in 2015 that, according to the Treasury, British taxpayers finished ‘paying off’ the debt which the British government incurred in order to compensate British slave owners in 1835 because of the abolition of slavery. Abolition meant their profiteering from human misery would (gradually) come to an end. Not a penny was paid to those who were enslaved and brutalised.
The British government borrowed £20 million to compensate slave owners, which amounted to a massive 40 percent of the Treasury’s annual income or about 5 percent of British GDP. The loan was one of the largest in history.
[1] https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/2022/the-colle...
Eight year old 'news' now, but still relatively recent given it was a near 200 year note.
I wonder how that compares (perhaps as percentage of GDP or per capita or so) to the expenses of the American civil war.
(Also, would be a bit odd for the British government to pay people who were not enslaved by it, but instead by private individuals)
In the 1960s, There was a partial rapprochement with the west and the USSR paid out holders of shares in Baku Oil fields, if they could produce the paperwork...
- Tsar-era government debt had understandingly been repudiated by the communist government and mostly traded as a collector's item, with individual bonds framed or used as bathroom wallpaper or just chucked out. But enough of it was still in peoples' hands that the USSR had to pay it off before they could get access to to debt markets in the 80s.
- IG Farben shares continued to be listed and traded into the 21st century. I remember in the 80s a few crass English friends of mine who worked in the City bought and sold some shares, mainly amused that a Reichsmark-Sterling exchange rate was still available and in fact fluctuated, entirely for the trading of this one "asset".
Finance can be weird, yet hard nosed sometimes.
This does show how the 2010s had historically low interest rates as new bonds were always more expensive for the government until then
Doesn't sound right. It only came into existence in 1914, so only one "hundred" since then. What are I not seeing? :)
https://amp.theguardian.com/business/blog/2014/oct/31/paying...
> Dr John Snow: This well-known physician died at noon, on the 16th instant, at his house in Sackville Street, from an attack of apoplexy. His researches on chloroform and other anaesthetics were appreciated by the profession.
versus the 2013 one:
> The journal accepts that some readers may wrongly have inferred that The Lancet failed to recognise Dr Snow's remarkable achievements in the field of epidemiology and, in particular, his visionary work in deducing the mode of transmission of epidemic cholera.
* https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
* https://www.newsweek.com/lancet-corrects-john-snows-1858-obi...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Snow
Better late than never I guess.
That said, I believe the significance of Snow's 1854 findings were not yet widely appreciated in 1858, and in this case the omission in the original obituary seems understandable and reasonable.
His work on cholera was completely ignored for years and he gave up on trying to convince people about Germ Theory and went back to anaesthetics.
I am confused. What is the Lancet blaming its readers for? Why was this inference wrong?
Interesting to contrast this with the modern version, on Wikipedia:
- "Snow suffered a stroke while working in his London office on 10 June 1858. He was 45 years old at the time.[38] [...] It has been speculated that his premature death may have been related to his frequent exposure and experimentation with anesthetic gases, which is now known to have numerous adverse health effects. Snow administered and experimented with ether, chloroform, ethyl nitrate, carbon disulfide, benzene, bromoform, ethyl bromide and dichloroethane during his lifetime.[40]"
Come to think of it, this seems to go for basically all British people I know.
It's an old case, but timely and relevant. The story, now being old and quaint, provides a lower complexity, lower stakes model for monetary actions of the present.
>> "The same edition of the paper also demonstrated a good understanding of the FT's readership, noting with 'interest' and 'encouragement' that champagne production had not been affected by the Great War effort."
Lol, fair enough.
I could not help noticing the hypocrisy of him. Also when I read the end of the paragraph I chuckled recalling his famous "In the long run we are all dead"
if there was a time the ruling classes would argue for lies in the national interest, its war time.
I cannot imagine a government embarking on war who would say "well.. we asked you to fund it, but alas, the city said we're losing so the bond wasn't there and we've decided to cancel the war"
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2018/07/19/the-corre...
A name is a imaginary representation, this is different from a factual claim about reality.
P.S.: Aaand, ninjaed.
Kinda like how they gave everyone a year or more where they could live in a place without paying rent via some BS CDC power that didn’t exist.
Because, when, after allowing FDIC broader discretion to decide how to resolve bank failures so long as at least insured balances were covered from the creation of the FDIC, Congress narrowed that discretion in 1991 by adopting the least-cost rule which normally prohibits FDIC from committing more from the Deposit Insurance Fund than necessary to cover insured accounts, they also permitted the FDIC to choose a higher-cost resolution when the required set of officials certified the existence of a systemic risk. (The system risk provision itself precedes the least-cost rule, but when the least-cost rule was adopted, the procedure for systemic risk waa changed and the system risk privision was made an exception to the least cost rule.)
FDIC determined that a 100% advance dividend was appropriate, but merchandised it in a way that allows the receivership bank to continue operating as normal.
Eg: The episode marked an important step on the Bank’s transformation from private institution to a central bank.. A decade after the Armistice, the altered role of the Bank prompted creation of a Parliamentary commission to examine its functions, ultimately setting it on a path to nationalisation
See https://bankunderground.co.uk/2017/08/08/your-country-needs-...
I believe that's what was meant by "fake". In other words, inauthentic.
As far as the transformation from "private institution" to central bank, are you suggesting that this was a form of Open Market Operations?
I’m not sure I understand everything that is said nor fully believe, given that it’s a bitcoin maximalist dumping on fiat currency, but what I took away was that the english pound was redeemable for gold. When they did this fake bond purchase, they just minted new pounds (that didn’t have gold backing it) and used that to buy back these bonds in secret.
This is significant because there was a fear of a bank run in England at the start of the war where everyone was afraid that this would happen. The Bank of England had to assure everyone that they wouldn’t do this to stop the bank run - and so, when they actually went ahead and did it, they kind of had to keep it secret
I didn't watch the video but if this is what they said it's wrong. The Bank of England had the money in their reserves and they used that.
Having a couple straw buyers and actual money to use for the war would seem to be easier to hide and utilize.
This event is not at all unrelated to the new deal, allied WWII monetary policies, lend lease, the marshall plan, Keynesianism, New Keynesianism (eg Friedman/monetarism) and into the present day.
the Bank(ers) ... purchased the securities in their own names with the bonds then held by the Bank of England on its balance sheet. To hide the fact.. bonds were classified as holdings of 'Other Securities' in the Bank of England's balance sheet rather than as holdings of Government Securities."
The BoE prints £350m of bonds. The BoE sells £100m to the public. BoE declares/lies that they successfully sold all £350m. The BoE buys the outstanding £250m of bonds itself using a virtual credit line backed by BoE bonds. Once the final transaction is completed, £250m of new money exists in government accounts and can be used to fund the war.
This is exactly how UK/US/Etc government deficits work today. Bonds are created. Some are sold. The rest is bought (or kept) by the Fed/BoE itself. The "deception" allows order to remain in the banking world while also allowing governments to fight the war/depression/deficit.
These days, the outright lies are not strictly necessary. Instead, we rely on complexity of ritual, bureaucracy and bond market transactions to "cover our tracks." One thing that has changed in society (if not in central banks and treasuries) is that "what gives money value" has become a non-question. I think that was different 100 years ago.
The researchers write: "The long-held laissez-faire principles of the Liberal and Conservative parties were thus sacrificed to raise the capital upon which the War's outcome depended."
This is a cliche. During the great irish famine 70 years prior, both the King and Prime Minister were involved in almost identical schemes. There are lots of examples.
To me, the odd part is that we can't play it straight and admit that governments invent money... or that it's OK that they do. Every policy that relates to banking, central banking, money printing or such requires some sort of lie. Just like now, FDIC bails out ostensibly uninsured accounts/banks. This seemingly has to come with an assurance that it's not what it looks like... even though it obviously is.
IE, it's not weird that money works like this. It is weird that we have to pretend like it doesn't.
That's one way of putting it, though kind of specific to current discourse. You might also say the "illusion" that a central bank is just a bank. You could say the the "illusion" is that banks are firms, providing financial services for profit like any other type of service.
In times past, the "illusion" was that banks are "fully backed and solvent." It's hard to pin down exactly what the "deception" is. Almost always, it involves surprisingly moralistic language.
Our generations' "bailout story" is that bailouts are necessary for stability. But... the problem with bailouts is "moral hazard," which in current language means specifically "externalized long-tail risk." These moral hazards are what (in the current story) cause bank failures in the first place. The business cycle has been reduced to a banking cycle, and it's now described as a cycle of moral failures.
In truly modern (postmodern?) fashion, these days everyone sees that there's a lie, but no one agrees on what the lie is.
Why are they happy?