[barry-cotter]

> How's that work? Did the bondholder agree to new terms or did the issuer just unilaterally "change" them?

The government can always unilaterally change the terms. That’s the defining feature of a government, the monopoly on the legitimate use of force. See when the US went off the gold standard [1].

[1] https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fdr-takes-united...

[rkagerer]

But it's not government issued (or at least not by any "federal" level agency).

Per https://news.yale.edu/2015/09/22/living-artifact-dutch-golde...

The bonds were issued by the Hoogheemraadschap Lekdijk Bovendams, a water board composed of landowners and leading citizens that managed dikes, canals, and a 20-mile stretch of the lower Rhine in Holland called the Lek. (Stichtse Rijnlanden is a successor organization to Lekdijk Bovendams.)

[gpvos]

Water boards are an actual layer of government in the Netherlands, they levy taxes and there are elections for them. I don't know their exact powers regarding contracts.

[nl]

> Dutch water boards had relative financial autonomy, which protected them from falling fortunes of the central government and allowed the securities that they issued to survive. The lives of perpetual loans typically were “cut short by imprudent financing, government recall, or the misfortunes of wars and revolutions,” Rouwenhorst and Goetzmann write.

https://news.yale.edu/2015/09/22/living-artifact-dutch-golde...

[FrenchAmerican]

The rule of law applies to a government as well as any other body, organization, firm or person.

That's the most fundamental difference between a democratic country and authoritarian & tyrannical regimes.

You can sue the US government in US courts and to some extent in international courts.

Not that democratic governments don't abuse their power. They do quite regularly, but still: even their use of force is limited by the law.