Venice’s failed war against Constantinople led to the first bond market
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Venice’s failed war against Constantinople led to the first bond market
Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.
jmyeet · · focus · HN ↗
Fun fact: possibly the first international banking system was built by the Knights Templar almost 1000 years ago to fund the first Crusade [1]. People would make deposits with them, travel to the Holy Land, possibly redeem what were very early certificates of deposit, fight and come back. Many times they'd die along the way, or fighting while there or on the way back. So the KT got rich off of unredeemed deposits. It bears some similarities to how Swiss banks got rich from WW2 except there the lack of redemption came from a death camps not issuing death certificates to now-dead Jewish depositors.
Never underestimate financial incentives. The Knights Templar wouldn't have wanted to Crusade to end and they would've wanted to encourage as many people as possible to go.
The modern day version of this is wars for oil. Except the war isn't really about oil. It's about selling weapons. Oil dependance just induces demand for weapons. So if you ever wonder why countries don't aggressively pursue renewable energy, it's because it would directly hurt weapons manufacturers.
No one goes to war over a solar panel [2].
[1]: <a href="https://www.historyhit.com/how-did-the-knights-templar-evolve-into-a-highly-profitable-international-organisation/" rel="nofollow">https://www.historyhit.com/how-did-the-knights-templar-evolv...
[2]: <a href="https://www.theenergymix.com/no-one-goes-to-war-over-a-solar-panel/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theenergymix.com/no-one-goes-to-war-over-a-solar...
broken-kebab · · focus · HN ↗
Oil industry moves significantly (like very significantly) more money than weapons producing. It makes it pretty hard to fit this novel theory to the reality.