Economics, History, Debt

In George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series, the Iron Bank is a quietly menacing figure that lingers in the background of Westeros’s civil war. The exact power wielded by the world’s most powerful financial institution is made clear when the Queen Regent Cersei Lannister informs the Iron Bank that she would delay repayment indefinitely. In response to Cersei’s default, her creditor throws its financial heft behind another rival, quadrupling his forces overnight and shifting the war’s balance in one fell swoop.