my days with tyrants

Chapter 25 You say my hand, why can't it control it?
the next day.

"So this thing has depreciated severely now, and the usual banknotes are only exchanged for 250 copper coins?"

Yang Feng said while holding a banknote with a denomination of [-] Wen.

His requirements were basically met, including the more sensitive iron coupon.

That thing Zhu Yuanzhang posted a lot...

Anyway, he didn't recognize it afterwards, all the princes he killed had iron coupons, this thing was useless from birth, similar to when you and I made a promise to grow old together, and when I turned around, I was tired of aesthetics, that enchanting vixen Get in the middle, why don't you die, you yellow-faced woman?Zhu Yuanzhang is already considered kind. Li Cunxu issued it to Zhu Youqian in the first year, and killed the whole family immediately after the new year. Zhu Youqian's wife directly threw the iron coupon at the feet of the general who ransacked the house...

"This was given to our family by your emperor last year. I am an illiterate woman, so I don't know what is written on it!"

It made the general very embarrassed.

So those decent people in ancient times generally thought that posting this was telling you to rebel quickly!

"The iron coupon was issued only when I suspected that I was rebelling. I never thought about rebelling but sent me this. Is this trying to force me to rebel?"

This is what someone really rebelled said.

That's why Zhu Yuanzhang didn't mind giving Yang Feng an iron coupon!

It's just a four-pound iron plate, just give it to him, but it takes some time to make it, so he can't get it today.

The rest of the carriages and banknotes are trivial matters. As Yang Feng said, they are all printed by himself. What do you care about?
Zhu Yuanzhang directly gave him one hundred ingots, one ingot is fifty guan, that is, five thousand guan, the legal value is equal to 5000 taels of silver, but in fact one tael of silver can not be exchanged, because only silver is allowed to exchange for treasure notes, but not Exchange money for silver.

However, at this time, the treasure banknotes have indeed depreciated sharply.

"In Hongwu's eighth year of the banknote law, banknotes are always worth a thousand Wen, silver is one or two, and four are worth one or two gold. The use of money, coupled with the increasing number of new and old banknotes, and the doping of counterfeit banknotes, makes it actually cheaper every day.

At present, although there are differences in various places, it is generally around 250 cash.

Even in some remote places, they would rather barter for goods than use precious banknotes, and His Majesty has always been troubled by this. "

Zhang Xianzong said.

At this time, many painters had gathered behind them.

As if worshiping a sacred object, he was drawing a map of Yang Feng's wristwatch, whose light was like a holy light.

As Xiaoyu said, drawing a small thing into a big one is just the basic skills of those painters. Although the screen of his watch is pitifully small, the map is bigger than a copper coin, but for these painters Come on, contouring is really easy to do...

People are professional.

So now Yang Feng showed them the outlines of Daming, Indochina Peninsula, India, and Wa Kingdom, all of which have been quickly drawn.

Now we have started to add the river and lake part.

Then the mountains will be added, compared with the mixed map of the Ming Dynasty and other materials, and the administrative divisions and place names of the Ming Dynasty will be added.

Even Zhu Yuanzhang specifically requested that the modern agricultural areas be drawn.

Anyway, this is a color map, nothing more than painting the agricultural areas with special colors.

I have to say that His Majesty the Emperor doesn't care about anything else, but how many places can be farmed.

Each of these painters has a picture, all in the same frame, and finally the most accurate one will be selected and presented to His Majesty the Emperor.

After this part of the drawing is completed, other parts will continue to be drawn, and finally all the drawn maps will be stitched together to make a complete map of Kunyu and Wanguo in the form of a screen, and let Zhu Yuanzhang put it in the palace, watching and fantasizing about conquering the world every day , although he definitely won't have this chance, after all he is already over 60, but the old man has great ambitions!
You can still imagine it.

"If you can't play with paper money, you can honestly make metal currency. Paper money is indeed an advanced idea. We were all paper money at that time, but it wasn't his way of playing. Banknotes are waste paper. You have to have anchors to be valuable. Go and get them." He called, and I gave him a good talk about currency."

Yang Feng said.

It sounded like he was the emperor.

"Your Excellency, who is the Son of Heaven, come and go as soon as you call him?"

"You go anyway, whether he likes to come or not, I'm already in a good mood to give him a lecture. Besides, after you go, can you literati's mouth still speak so badly? You won't beautify it for me and let him It feels better, although there is no difference in essence!"

"You'd better tell me first, I'll see if it makes sense, otherwise I will rashly report to His Majesty, when His Majesty was furious, my whole family was killed.

What is an anchor? "

Zhang Xianzong is not that stupid. It was Yang Feng who summoned Zhu Yuanzhang to beautify him.

Could his beautification make Zhu Yuanzhang ignore this problem?

Yang Feng is a bachelor, with a bowl-sized scar on his head. A family and business like him don't have the guts to play with him so excitingly.

"First of all, we should understand that this thing is just a piece of waste paper. It is too hard to wipe your ass in a latrine. Now it can buy things because it represents imperial power. It is His Majesty who wants it to be able to buy things, so ordinary people have to use it to buy things. Stuff. In theory, this approach is actually correct, even very advanced, too advanced, because this currency did not become popular until 600 years later, we called it national credit currency, and all countries did it at that time .

As for its depreciation, we also have this problem.

And it is no different from the reason for its depreciation, that is, it is too easy to use, and I can't control the desire to print more.

You say my hand, why can't it control it? "

Yang Feng clapped his hands as if possessed by Zhongtang and said.

But in good conscience, the depreciation of treasure notes is not serious...

Hongwu established the banknote law in eight years, and now it has been 17 years, and it has depreciated by three-quarters, which is much stronger than the US dollar.

The decoupling of the U.S. dollar and gold was in [-], and the addition of [-] to [-] is [-]. The U.S. dollar after decoupling from gold is essentially anchored to crude oil. In [-], crude oil was less than two dollars a barrel. A barrel of dollars, which depreciates much faster than banknotes.

The crows in the world are really black!
The integrity of the US emperor is actually not as good as Zhu Yuanzhang.

Zhang Xianzong smiled slightly, obviously acquiescing to this point.

"Then what did your Majesty the Emperor do?"

Yang Feng asked.

"Rewards, His Majesty rewards the military households with treasures every year. Those who win the conquest are also rewarded with treasures. The civilians who transport the military supplies are also rewarded with treasures. Some remote places encounter famine. The disaster victims rewarded precious banknotes for their use. In addition, the imperial court bought them and built these. The more your Majesty rewards, the more treasured banknotes are released to the people, but there are not many places where the treasured banknotes are used by the people, and the common people I don’t collect precious banknotes as wealth, and I am eager to use them when I get them. Naturally, there are more and more precious banknotes in the market, and they are becoming less and less valuable.”

"So the question is unresolved.

Even through temporary reforms, banknotes can be circulated with the support of his knives, or even copper coins are banned, but as long as he continues to print banknotes, he will still have to face the problem of increasing banknote stocks and then continuous depreciation.

This is a natural flaw of this currency.

In fact, it’s not just this kind of currency. Any currency has this problem. It’s just that metal currency is not printed as you want, so it is limited by its natural attributes, but if the amount of this metal suddenly increases, it will also depreciate. , For example, silver, if the influx of silver from overseas continues, tens of millions of taels per year, you will see that one stone of rice costs several taels of silver.

It's just that paper money is particularly serious about this problem.

Because it has no restrictions at all, it depends entirely on the integrity of the ruler, and it is too easy to get. After all, you have everything to start the printing press, so this is the first thing that comes to your mind when you encounter trouble. Now your emperor can still control his printing money. desire, but future emperors will rely more and more on this method.

They will print money more unrestrainedly, and finally make the precious money really become waste paper.

That's when the real currency crash happens.

You should hurry up and call your emperor. There are many things about this question that you should not listen to. Only after you listen to it will you really be in danger of killing your whole family. "

Yang Feng said.

He really couldn't listen to this question.

Because it is related to Zhu Yuanzhang's fundamental power...

currency rights.

Theoretically speaking, what Zhu Yuanzhang did was right. The depreciation of the banknotes cannot be blamed on him. This kind of currency naturally has this kind of problem.

This problem exists with any currency.

The problem of silver depreciation in the late Ming Dynasty was also very serious.

In 17, it only depreciated to a quarter. This depreciation rate makes the credit currencies of most modern countries feel ashamed.

The Federal Reserve said that you are really too young, the Russian Central Bank laughed and said nothing, and the European Central Bank said that it took us only 20 years to go from eight euros per gram of gold to fifty euros per gram of gold.

But his principle is not wrong, that is, the state control of currency. In the feudal era, I was the country, he was Daming, and Daming was him. His currency control was Daming’s currency control, and the collapse of Daming was essentially currency control. loss.The problem he prevented was later proved by history to be absolutely necessary. The country really cannot lose currency control, so he banned copper coins in the later period, and the reason for the ban on copper coins is very simple.

The gentry and merchants in Jiangsu and Zhejiang didn't use the banknotes, so that in the last years of Hongwu, the banknotes in Zhejiang were devalued to 160 copper coins.

As for the reason is very simple...

They have money.

As the most affluent area of ​​Ming Dynasty, it is inevitable that wealth will gather there, and as the ruling center of the Southern Song Dynasty in the past, the aristocratic family has long saved a large amount of copper coins, even gold and silver.

Then the result of this development...

The result has been well represented by the history of the Ming Dynasty.

(Thanks to book friend Benjamin Siegberg for the reward)

(End of this chapter)