Credibility is the invisible balance sheet of economies, and reputation is its market price. Every enterprise, from kingdoms to corporations, has been built on the alignment between what is promised and what is performed. Benjamin Franklin observed, “It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.” Reputation measures credibility; credibility sustains reputation. Once either is squandered, both are rarely restored. History shows they cannot be printed, decreed, or willed back into existence. Finance arose to preserve that fragile alignment in order to anchor trust in proof and to transmit credibility through ledgers that outlast their makers. Yet over time, those ledgers drifted from proof to promise. The Dutch institutionalized equity through the East India Company, allowing strangers to coordinate at scale. It worked, until credibility itself became too elastic and broke from reality when the measure of truth was replaced by the convenience of belief.

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