Did You Know...

That World War I just ended?
 Germany sold treasury bonds in the 1920's and early '30's to pay for its reparations debt agreed to (well... they didn't have much choice did they?)  at the Treaty of Versailles. These bonds were promptly defaulted on by the Nazis, then payment was further delayed by the division between East and West Germany after WW II. In 1995, Germany began making intest payments on the remaining outstanding bonds, finally making the last $94 Million installment yesterday. Of course, the original $63 Billion (in US dollars) settlement was revised down to $33 Billion, (still worth over $400 Billion in today's currency) and then the interest owed was revised down several times. And it STILL took massive currency devaluation that exacerbated the Great Depression, another World War, and almost a century to pay it off. I hope the world has learned its lesson about the (lack of) intelligence of forcing a weary, war-tattered, loosing country to pay huge sums of money to the winners.