Hoewel de uitgifte van vastrentende waarden een standaardmechanisme is geworden voor overheden en bedrijven om financiering aan te trekken, ontbreekt het vaak aan een duidelijk omschreven doel.
History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. The concept of fixed income dates back thousands of years when cattle and grain were used to make loans. The more modern interpretation was born in 12th-century Venice and was commonly used to fund wars and support state initiatives, and it was later used to fund infrastructure development, such as Dutch dykes. The common thread of these early bonds was their sense of purpose—money was being loaned to finance a specific objective.