The Druid Deep Dive, Episode 17: Railroad bond mania: the track was real, the traffic was not (1868-1879)
Between 1868 and 1873 American railroads laid 31,000 miles of track on borrowed money, and 36 percent of the corporate bond market then defaulted. Episode 17 traces who built, who paid and who kept the rails, and reads a Texas bankruptcy docket and this week's AI bond selloff against it.
