When France's richest man, LVMH boss Bernard Arnault, shocked the market last November with his $16 billion purchase of jewelry icon Tiffany, he knew he would have to issue about $10 billion in bonds to fund the deal. He also knew it wouldn't be a problem, for one reason: the ECB would be there to make sure the deal got done. But not even Arnault, who expected the yield from the bond issuance to be "between 0% and 1%" anticipated that the deal would get done in a way that the bond market would end up paying him.

Yes, thanks to the lasting legacy of one Mario Draghi, the richest man in France is now even richer because he had to issue debt.

What happened? As the financial world was closely following every fabricated data point out of Beijing in China's fight with the coronavirus epidemic, LVMH quietly raised €7.5 billion ($8.3 billion) and GBP1.55 billion ($2 billion), over a range of maturities from two to 11 years, to help finance its $16 billion purchase of Tiffany.