Numlock News: December 12, 2024 • Bond, Antarctica, Scotch

Dec 12, 2024

Bond

The oldest bond in the world turned 400 years old on Tuesday, a remarkable run for a financial asset and one that still pays out. A flood in the Netherlands in 1624 necessitated raising 23,000 Carolus guilders in order to finance repairs, and one of the bonds sold to raise that money was a 1,200-guilder bond sold on December 10, 1624, to a wealthy woman in Amsterdam, a bond that promised the water board would pay out 2.5 percent interest in perpetuity to the bondholder. It’s still paying out €13.61 of interest annually, and on Tuesday the current owner (the New York Stock Exchange, by way of a Dutch-American banker who bought it at auction and gave it to the NYSE in 1938) collected £299.42 of owed interest.

Robin Wigglesworth, Financial Times

Legacies

Rereleases have been doing great numbers at the box office, with the Imax rerelease of the 2014 Christopher Nolan film Interstellar making $4.57 million domestically at a $27,500 per-screen average. It joins Coraline, the Laika stop-motion movie from 2009, which made $33.6 million domestically over the summer. Over the course of the year, even setting aside the one-off repertory screenings in boutique theaters, something like 27 legacy movies have been rereleased this year in over 100 theaters, and in the aggregate they’ve grossed over $90 million.

Ethan Shanfeld and Adam B. Vary, Variety

Antarctica

Congratulations to your most eccentric friend, who recently received the exciting news that NASA will now be launching balloon flights in Antarctica. The Scientific Balloon Program has returned to the remote continent for its annual campaign, which this year will see two balloon flights carrying nine missions to near space starting in mid-December. The experiments relate to astrophysics, upper atmosphere research, and space biology. NASA uses zero-pressure balloons for the efforts, which are made out of thin plastic and can lift 8,000 pounds of payload to an altitude above 99.8 percent of the atmosphere. The balloons tend to last longer in polar regions in the summer because of the constant daylight, given that the day-night cycle that can shorten their lifespan doesn’t happen.

Olivia Littleton, NASA

Scotch

According to the latest data from Noble & Co., the price of great scotch is falling sharply. An analysis of 91,000 transactions found a 16 percent decline year over year in the volume of secondary sales of the good stuff. The average price of a bottle of whisky at auction is down to £363 from £370, which has presumably sent the entire country of Scotland into an acute panic. Most of the issue is at the upper end of the market, as the volume of scotch selling for over £1,000 is down 34 percent.

Scott Wright, The Herald

Reviews

Reading reviews has become a not inconsiderable source of consternation for shoppers, with 93 percent of consumers taking reviews into account before making a purchase and something like 58 percent of consumers reading online reviews at least weekly. Overall, reviews have become an essential part of the process of buying an item.

Zoë Bernard, Sherwood News

Cup

The most fair-minded body in the world, FIFA, has selected Saudi Arabia as the 2034 host of the World Cup. The country will build 11 new stadiums, which I’m certain will go off without a hitch. Eight of the stadiums will be built in Riyadh, among them the 92,760-seat King Salman International Stadium. According to human rights campaigners, Saudi Arabia uses sports to distract from massive human rights problems and routine suppression and violence against the press. According to those who dispute that, hey, look, a stadium!

David Watkinson, BBC

Flights

Globally, the average airfare next year is projected to come in at $380, down 1.8 percent compared to this year and down 44 percent since 2014. Fun fact: Given 5 billion people on 40 million flights in 2025, and projected profits for the industry coming in at $36.6 billion globally, the average profit per passenger is coming in at an incredibly modest $7 per passenger. That does depend a lot on the region; for instance, the Middle East is looking at a profit of $23.10 per departing passenger, while North America is looking at $10.30, Europe is $8.20 and the Asia-Pacific is just $1.80.

Rafat Ali, Skift

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