NPR.

This is the undercut of From Planet Money, I'm Darren Woods.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the response of much of the international community in the

form of sanctions shows how economic tools can be wielded as weapons.

Government finance is not just some impersonal exercise in number crunching, it can take on

this moral dimension.

Planet Money's well and long is here, hi well.

Hi Darion, yeah, this question of morality and government finance is a really big one.

And right now there is another dispute between Ukraine and Russia that really speaks to this

issue.

It's a legal dispute over $3 billion in Ukrainian bonds that Russia bought in 2013.

And to understand what's at the heart of this conflict, we have to introduce a concept

with an incredibly evocative name, Odyes Debt.

Yes, Odyes Debt.

I first heard you talk about this term last week and I had to dig in and learn more about

it.

So Odyes Debt was first coined in 1927 by a Russian emigrate and law scholar named Alexander

Sack.

This is sort of a 1927 hashtag that has come through to this day and retain.

Anna Gelfren is a law professor at Georgetown who studies government debt and financial regulation.

And the basic concept of Odyes Debt is this.

If a tyrant or a despotic government borrows money, the next government shouldn't have to

...