We may live in a frenetic age of diminished attention spans and 24-hour news cycles, but when it comes to the debt markets, investors are increasingly taking the long view. In the past few years, governments, corporations, and even universities have issued bonds that won’t come due for fifty or even a hundred years.
Why stop there? Why not issue bonds that never, ever mature? It may sound absurd, but debt without a fixed maturity date is the historical bedrock of the modern financial system. While borrowers on the margins still use them today, perhaps it’s time for even the most credit-worthy borrowers to bring them back.
