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disney is a publicly traded company. i own stock in disney :)
There were bonds issued by Dutch East India Company https://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3433724
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What do you even mean? It sounds like a witty metaphor for something, but even for what? DEIco is a real historical enterprise with well-documented operations.
I assume he meant to decry the use of inflation adjusting and similar shenanigans to be able to compare two groups in vastly different ages. It is similar to saying that a peasant in today's world eats/lives better then a king a thousand years ago. For instance if you use percentage of world wealth as ameasure, then Adam controlled 50% of the world's wealth, arguably the richest person to ever live (or mythologically…
VOC (Dutch East India Company) was more powerful than most nations at the time. I asked this question on Quora once and got interesting answers [0]. VOC was an incredible enterprise, and there are a few today too, imo, they exist as conglomerates (Samsung, P&G, Amazon), political entities (CIA, CPC), monopolies (Maersk, Google), syndicates (DeBeers [1], NeoAristocrats [2], BigPharma, BigBank, BigSugar, BigOil), and c…
This is simply not true. VOC at the beggining was extremly profitable but never had that much of military muscle. They were able to hold to some important trading posts but never been able or interested to expand their holdings.
Also in their most valuable possesion (Banda Islands and in Java/Sumatra) they had been challenged by small British force. As a result VOC have swaped Riu Island for New Amsterdam/New York.
Latter attempts at military expansion made VOC bancrupt. British India Company in comparision had been doing way better in this regard financing their private armies via taxing Indian subjects and profitable drug dealings. VOC simply lacked enough profit/tax base to keep up significant military presence.
Also mentioned: The south sea company was basically a huge banking bubble scam. It is quite an interesting tale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1kndKWJKB8
Hello? Bitcoin? Is that you? Nah just a ghost of poor banking decisions past. Spooky.
TLDR: Scottish gambler becomes the most influential financial state official in France and uses his power to create an impossible financial scheme, makes everyone crazy for stocks for a colony that is mostly composed of colonists dying of hardship, resulting in an implosion of French Economy. Scottish, oh how they've been around. This is a funny sidenote to one of the founding fathers of US, Alexander Hamilton, who was as well of scottish heritage but created a financial system that did not implode.
Leaving aside the terrible everything-must-be-clickbait-nowadays writing style, that doesn’t sound right.
Comparisons of monetary values over timescales of centuries are always pretty fraught, but this one sounds like pure rubbish. According to that conversion, a single Dutch guilder was worth $100,000 in today’s money, which sounds like an unreasonable amount of money to be carrying around in a single coin.
As it happens I was doing a bit of research on prices in this era the other day after watching a movie about the Dutch tulip mania (Tulip Fever, 2017) and trying to put the thousands-of-guilder prices being paid for tulip bulbs in that movie into perspective. The Wikipedia article on the tulip craze mentions that a skilled workman made about 300 guilders a year, which would represent about $30 million if we take this site’s conversion at face value.
I don’t think it’s a valid comparison. Comparing a company which had an army and used force to occupy and obtain its wealth is not how corporates work today. Today there is deceptive advertising and marketing which are not the same as army and force.
t the time of his death in 1937, John D. Rockefeller was worth an estimated $1.4 billion. Rockefeller was the first man in history to ever accumulate more than $1 billion (nominal dollars) in total wealth.
Rockefeller's $1.4 billion net worth in 1937 was 1/65th of the total GDP of the United States. In 2011, the total GDP of the United States was $15.09 trillion. If somebody currently had 1/65th of the total GDP of the United States, they would have a fortune of over $232 billion.
It's also important to note that Rockefeller gave away over $500 million (nominal dollars) over his lifetime, which helped to significantly shrink his net worth.
Are Apple Google and Facebook so rich? And how do you measure it? (Have not read the link). t the time of his death in 1937, John D. Rockefeller was worth an estimated $1.4 billion. Rockefeller was the first man in history to ever accumulate more than $1 billion (nominal dollars) in total wealth. Rockefeller's $1.4 billion net worth in 1937 was 1/65th of the total GDP of the United States. In 2011, the total GDP of t…
I mean, there's a guy coming pretty close to that right now.
I wonder how the British East India Company compared to its Dutch equivalent. I am too tired to write a comprehensive post right now, but with the Opium Wars and the monopoly on the Indian Subcontinent, I think the British EIC would be more powerful (and wealthier) than the Dutch EIC. Here are some (probably low quality) sources [0], [1]. Will write a better comment tomorrow after work. [0] https://www.quora.com/What…
Dutch had been able/lucky to grab/monopolize the most profitable trading route and hold to it. But at some point spice trade lost its appeal.
British had been unable to muscle into Dutch controlled trade (they have invented 'free trade' to justify their attempts).
But in their 2nd best trading posts in India British EIC had to built up military (because Indian and French presented tough military opposition) and find creative ways to finance its presence there (textiles, opium). As a results after 200 years British EIC became a force to recon with while Dutch VOC had been in decline.