"Clive George" wrote in message
...
On 16/02/2010 20:22, David WE Roberts wrote:

Look up 'War Bonds' sometime to see how honourable a government can be.

I tried briefly, got nowhere. Care to expand?

Sorry, typo - in WW2 it was called War Loan in the UK.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_bond explains how other countries did it.

In the UK the stock was undated (i.e. had no fixed date when it would be
repaid) but was sold on the understanding that after the war the people who
loaned the government their money would get it back.

However, this turned out to be inconvenient and War Loan is still being
traded today, but at a substantial discount from the original purchase
price.

See
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...s-1139854.html
for some commentary.

So people (such as my parents) who loaned their savings to the government in
good faith got cheated after the war and lost a significant amount of money.

Moral - don't trust any government when it makes long term promises.