Venice. The Mint is entirely freed from debt after several centuries (Venice itself had, in effect, invented the public debt). The government bonds Monte Novissimo and Monte di Sussidio are completely liquidated, and then it is the turn of the historic Monte Vecchio. Holders of the latter government bond, stable for several centuries, are paid the average market price from 1520 onwards, or 2.5%. Holders of blank bonds (original ones from more than a century earlier, never sold) receive double the rate: 5.0%. The downward trend in public debt had been underway for decades, interrupted only by the financing of the war in Cyprus (1570-73).
