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…