6 ms·

A perpetual bond has a finite present value. It's no more or less exploitative than a bond with finitely many payments and the same present value.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago
And, given a finite present value, I'm pretty sure Yale has the money to buy it back if they want to...
- kgwgk 4y ago
  Yale holds the bond and is being paid ~$30 per year. Apparently someone has to bring it to Amsterdam every couple of decades to collect the payments and keep the bond alive. They are losing money - I guess Yale has enough to do it just for fun, I mean, for the historical interest (pun intended).
  - t0mas88 4y ago
    Not just to Amsterdam, Stichtse Rijn is further south (around Utrecht). It includes the area where the 16th century rich people from Amsterdam would build their out of town mansions. Traveling there by boat, on a water system that has been managed for over 900 years. So this 367 years is old, but the organisation paying has existed in some form for more than twice that.
  - akavi 4y ago
    If someone gifted me the bond, I’d happily pay many multiples of the interest payments in airfare to go collect, and I have far less money than Yale. It’d be fun story and a cool bit of financial history, and keeping it “alive” is definitely worth a few grand every 10 years or so.
    - Ericson2314 4y ago
      It is fun cool history. I would have fun doing the trip with the document, not going to lie. But this ritual is also Proganda for capitalism. I don't mean that in a conspiracy way --- no one at Yale was like "yeah let's do this it makes finance looks good", but it clearly reflects someone having positive associations about this and the history of finance. It's kind of like how keeping around powerless monarchs is harmless in one sense, but a cosplay to uphold a classist society in another. I would not try to go for records with the longevity of either, I would abolish the monarchy and force all perpetual bond holders to sell them back to the issuers.
- max-ibel 4y ago
  Yale gets the money; the dutch pay. The dutch would love to terminate the load and do a balloon payment, but yale (correctly) thinks that a 'live' bearer bond is more valuable in their collection, so every 20 years or so they travel with the bond to the Netherlends to collect the (at this time nominal) payments.
Ericson2314 4y ago
> A perpetual bond has a finite present value. You are onotologically correct but epistemologically confused. In the first order, bonds are just contacts that are fungible enough to trade. In the second order, we have markets for them which arrange prices. In the third order, based on the practice of those markets and theorizing about them, we can up with temporal discounting and thus a way to assign finite present value. ---- > It's no more or less exploitative than a bond with finitely many payments and the same present value. And where was it said that the exploitation of the bond was solely a function of its present value? My complaint is not with present value. I am aware of these things. My complaint is with the nature of the contact in a way that is not captured by present value.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago

And, given a finite present value, I'm pretty sure Yale has the money to buy it back if they want to...

kgwgk 4y ago
Yale holds the bond and is being paid ~$30 per year. Apparently someone has to bring it to Amsterdam every couple of decades to collect the payments and keep the bond alive. They are losing money - I guess Yale has enough to do it just for fun, I mean, for the historical interest (pun intended).
- t0mas88 4y ago
  Not just to Amsterdam, Stichtse Rijn is further south (around Utrecht). It includes the area where the 16th century rich people from Amsterdam would build their out of town mansions. Traveling there by boat, on a water system that has been managed for over 900 years. So this 367 years is old, but the organisation paying has existed in some form for more than twice that.
- akavi 4y ago
  If someone gifted me the bond, I’d happily pay many multiples of the interest payments in airfare to go collect, and I have far less money than Yale. It’d be fun story and a cool bit of financial history, and keeping it “alive” is definitely worth a few grand every 10 years or so.
  - Ericson2314 4y ago
    It is fun cool history. I would have fun doing the trip with the document, not going to lie. But this ritual is also Proganda for capitalism. I don't mean that in a conspiracy way --- no one at Yale was like "yeah let's do this it makes finance looks good", but it clearly reflects someone having positive associations about this and the history of finance. It's kind of like how keeping around powerless monarchs is harmless in one sense, but a cosplay to uphold a classist society in another. I would not try to go for records with the longevity of either, I would abolish the monarchy and force all perpetual bond holders to sell them back to the issuers.
max-ibel 4y ago
Yale gets the money; the dutch pay. The dutch would love to terminate the load and do a balloon payment, but yale (correctly) thinks that a 'live' bearer bond is more valuable in their collection, so every 20 years or so they travel with the bond to the Netherlends to collect the (at this time nominal) payments.

Ericson2314 4y ago

> A perpetual bond has a finite present value. You are onotologically correct but epistemologically confused. In the first order, bonds are just contacts that are fungible enough to trade. In the second order, we have markets for them which arrange prices. In the third order, based on the practice of those markets and theorizing about them, we can up with temporal discounting and thus a way to assign finite present value. ---- > It's no more or less exploitative than a bond with finitely many payments and the same present value. And where was it said that the exploitation of the bond was solely a function of its present value? My complaint is not with present value. I am aware of these things. My complaint is with the nature of the contact in a way that is not captured by present value.