The centuries-old debt that's still paying interest

Tom Scott · 9.3M views · 2017-09-25 · 3:58

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Overview

Tom Scott visits Yale's archives to look at a 367-year-old bond from a Dutch water authority that is still paying interest. Finance professor Geert Rouwenhorst explains how it works.

On Hacker News

Shared as a short, interesting explainer on very long-lived financial instruments.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2021–2026

Topics

Investing & personal finance World history

What people said

sickofparadox · 2021-03 · Recommendation
Tom Scott has an excellent short video about just this topic if you're interested in further information about it. [VIDEO] Quite an interesting video, definitely worth a watch!
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Kim_Bruning · 2026-05 · Reference
Right, for Miami, you might want kwelschermen (or a variant thereof: deep impermeable cutoff walls, doesn't need to be concrete, can be made by clay injection too) , californian style water injection, locks that reject salt water. Different place, different geology, different tools. No place is exactly the same. Thing is I figure you need some form of water board to manage it. A political entity that's all about "here we are and here we stay". Once they're set up they're pretty reliable (there's one that's still paying interest on a 370-year old bond [VIDEO] )
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cyberax · 2023-03 · Reference
These are rookie numbers! Tom Scott has a video about bonds that are being serviced continuously for more than 370 years: [VIDEO]
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Sources

Video by Tom Scott, played through YouTube.

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