The U.S. government officially has less cash than internet giant Google, with just $34 billion in the bank compared to Google’s $75 billion. In the year 1517, one of the most important innovations in financial history was invented in Amsterdam: the government bond. It was a pretty revolutionary concept. Governments had been borrowing money for thousands of years… quite often at the point of a sword. Italian city-states like Venice and Florence had been famously demanding “forced loans” from their wealthy citizens for centuries. But the Dutch figured out how to turn government loans into an “investment”. It caught on slowly. But eventually government bonds became an extremely popular asset class. Secondary markets developed where people who owned bonds could sell them to other investors. Even simple coffee shops turned into financial exchanges where investors and traders would buy and sell bonds. In time, the government realized that its creditworthiness was paramount, and the Dutch developed a reputation as being a rock-solid bet. This practice caught on across the world. International markets developed. English investors bought French bonds. French investors bought Dutch bonds. Dutch investors bought American bonds. (By 1803, Dutch investors owned a full 25% of US federal debt. [...]