> there's really only one bad thing that can happen in a capitalist economy: bondholders not getting paid.
Maybe I over-read it at the time, but I got the same feeling after reading a history of the 1500s Mediterranean countries (Braudel's "The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II"), more exactly that the a very great injustice had been made to the bankers of the time (mostly the Genoese and Fugger family) for not getting their money back from the King of Spain, to which they had lent a lot of money (it's like they had gotten a big haircut on present-day Government bonds). There's an interesting discussion about that at this link: http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/4432/what-were-th...
Maybe I over-read it at the time, but I got the same feeling after reading a history of the 1500s Mediterranean countries (Braudel's "The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II"), more exactly that the a very great injustice had been made to the bankers of the time (mostly the Genoese and Fugger family) for not getting their money back from the King of Spain, to which they had lent a lot of money (it's like they had gotten a big haircut on present-day Government bonds). There's an interesting discussion about that at this link: http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/4432/what-were-th...