White Collar show -- bond valuation

Hey all,

Random question: was watching the new show on USA network "White Collar" (http://www.hulu.com/watch/104368/white-collar-pil…) and there was a really simple bond valuation question in it but it sounded weird: (for the full details in the show, click the Hulu link above and watch the segments from ~29 min to 31 min)

the quote was that the bond was "zero option, face = 1000, 9% interest, compounded for 64 yrs" (premise is that there is this bond from 1940s and it should have increased in value over the years) and I'm assuming it's a zero coupon bond and they valued it at $248,000.

so when you value a zero coupon bond it's (face value)/(1+interst)^years so it should be 1000/1.09^64 which is ~4.02

so why are they valuing it at $248,000?

The only way I know they'd get that is if they multiplied 1000 by 1.09^64 because 1.09^64 is 248, and multiplied by 1000 would be 248,000. Does USA networks just have bad scriptwriters or am I missing something?

4 Comments
 

Actually scrap that, that would rely on there being interest on the interest not collected which would make minimal sense. Crap scriptwriters seems to be the trouble here.

 

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