Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 906 Money Travel ([-])

"How many currencies are circulating in the domestic market now? Has any of you done similar statistics or estimates?" Qiang Quansheng, the former director of the State Administration of Precious Metals, the current Minister of Finance, and the Central Executive Committee, who is over fifty years old, said in Ask a group of subordinates in his office.

Most of the subordinates who were summoned today are people from the financial system, such as Zhou Shenwo, the current director of the Precious Metals Administration who succeeded the position of "Central Bank Governor", and the largest domestic banks (Northwest Reclamation Bank, United Industrial Credit Bank, Commercial Clearing Bank, Banco de la Plata is a joint venture bank, and the president is a Genoese, so he was not invited to participate in the financial work conference), the president of the First Mint, and the chief of the section chief of economic statistics in May Organ Several people are basically the people who know the financial and economic situation of the East China Republic best.

In today's East Coast Republic, funds are still relatively abundant, and of course it is only "relatively".Most of the pitiful deposits absorbed by the major banks were loaned to large backbone enterprises with the ability to earn foreign exchange through exports, and the profits they obtained through lending were also forced to buy a large amount of national construction bonds. There is no extra funds to play more tricks.

Most of the bank deposits are lent to large state-owned enterprises, and the private enterprises that have just emerged in the east coast are facing the dilemma of not being able to eat enough.Most of these enterprises focus on light industries targeting the domestic market, such as machine flour milling, furniture manufacturing, rope making, pickled product workshops, fruit deep processing, oil extraction, feed production, dairy products and other industries, basically they are all related to the common people. It is an industry that is closely related to daily production and life, and the products produced are mainly used in the east coast.

Among these industries, except for a few industries with a high degree of mechanization (such as flour), other industries are limited by factors such as production scale, labor costs, financing costs, and insufficiently advanced technology. China's Brazil and Peru imported some products to fill the gap, which made the whole country dissatisfied.For this reason, the Government Affairs Council held a special economic work conference a while ago, focusing on how to guide domestic capital to invest in light industries that these countries have not yet been able to take care of, so as to increase productivity, prosper the domestic commodity market, and reduce the cost of living of ordinary people.

In this meeting, the financial sector was regarded as the focus of attention. The opinion of the Government Administration Council is that the financial department should give full play to its subjective initiative and actively guide the capital accumulated in the private sector to invest in industries, so as to improve the utilization rate of funds and create more wealth.After all, only by allowing money to travel continuously can its true value be realized.

"According to our statistical data over the years, less than 30 local citizens now hold a total monetary wealth of more than 200 million yuan, about a quarter of which is in the form of acceptance bills. The rest are precious metals—well, more than 90% are silver coins." Zhou Shenwo, director of the General Administration of Precious Metals, cleared his throat and replied.

To be honest, although his data has been heavily referenced to some previous statistics, in the final analysis it is still based on estimation and guesswork.They internally perform various calculations based on various algorithms, such as salary tables over the years, price index tables, production and wholesale quantities of major commodities (grain, cloth, salt, meat, fish, etc.), and finally carry out comprehensive processing of their respective data , leading to this conclusion.As for whether the data is accurate or not, it is a matter of opinion. Anyway, the Government Affairs Council accepted the answer given by the Precious Metals Administration and formulated policies based on it.

However, Qiang Quansheng himself seems to have some doubts about this data, because in the data submitted to him by Zhou Shenwo, it is clearly pointed out that the wealth deposited in the country is about 200 million yuan (the currency circulating in the market at the same time is about 200 million yuan). It is about [-] million), which makes him a little confused. Why is there so little currency in circulation but there is no serious tightening of funds in the market?In this regard, Zhou Shenwo explained that most of the commercial transactions on the east coast are usually completed in the form of checks and money orders. This method is actually just to transfer the right to control money from one bank account to another, and does not require a market. There are many extra precious metal coins on it.

In addition, he also pointed out that people on the east bank—especially farmers—had a habit of hoarding precious metal coins on hand to deal with unknown risks.This method is so popular that a considerable part of the various currencies that have flowed into the East Bank over the years have never entered the circulation environment. The minting records of the First Mint on the East Bank can best illustrate the problem. A large number of gold and silver coins are constantly minted, but the market is always hungry like a monster, which makes people really distressed.

"Can you find a way to get this money out? At present, many industries in China are short of money, but there are a lot of funds deposited by the people, especially in rural areas. The first thing many soldiers who have gone abroad to fight wars are to build cellars to save money. It’s absurd to not like to deposit in the bank to get interest, but to deposit in the cellar!” Qiang Quansheng said with some depression, “In 50 and 51, we concentrated and exchanged a large number of funds issued for railway construction in previous years. The acceptance of bills of exchange consumes a lot of cash reserves, but the problem is that the exchanged money has gradually settled in the private sector and has not flowed to the industries that need it. To issue new commercial paper?"

"Do more publicity, do more ideological work, and increase deposit interest rates. It may attract some accumulated funds, but you can't count on too much. I estimate that more than two million yuan will be enough." Zhou Shenwo took a puff of cigarette, He said solemnly: "But 200 million is 200 million. It can also repair a railway of [-] kilometers, or build two medium-sized ports, or transform the sewer network and sewage treatment facilities of [-] or [-] settlements. It’s still very useful.”

Zhou Shenwo's words actually have another meaning, that is, if all the 200 million funds are really circulated into the market, the economy on the east coast will not collapse on the spot. If the rationing system or price control is not implemented at that time It's just a ghost, inflation can rise to the sky.However, the requirement of a strong victory is also reasonable. How to persuade the owners of these funds to deposit their money in the bank instead of storing it in their own cellars is indeed a very meaningful job.After all, it is much more useful to centralize the control of currency from scattered individuals to the country, because only the country can make money travel more meaningfully.

"Also, the amount of money put into the market must be well controlled, otherwise it may cause serious economic problems. This requires us to pay attention to the weighted price index table of a package of commodities at all times. The Mei Agency has a long way to go in this regard." Having said that, Qiang Quan Shengchao, a section chief of the Mei Agency who was present at the meeting, nodded, and then continued: "As for the structural money shortage in the market now, I think it is the old way to solve it by injecting liquidity."

"Minister, it is necessary to inject new liquidity into the market, but how do we do it?" Zhou Shenwo asked, maybe because he felt that his words were unclear, so he explained again: " What I mean is to continue to print new acceptance bills, or to use the gold stored in the Army’s No. 1.5 Prison (produced by the Tieling Gold Mine, currently there are about 75 tons, or about 75 yuan, of course, it must be more than that if it is actually cast into currency) [-] yuan)? How much should the amount be?"

"No, no new acceptance bills will be printed this time, and some other commercial bills will not be printed at all. The previous bills were too many types, too messy, and the printing was rough, which caused many problems, so this time The Ministry decided to combine all the bills into one type, that is, the newly issued treasury bills. The treasury bills will be guaranteed by the national fiscal revenue, the Army First Prison and the reserve gold in the commercial settlement bank vault, and the principal and interest will be repaid when they mature. The minimum period is one Years, the longest period is five years, anonymous, and can be transferred without endorsement.” Qiang Quansheng spoke for a long time, and then he drank a sip of tea to moisten his throat, and continued: “The quota is tentatively set at 50 yuan! This injects 50 yuan of liquidity into the market. If it is put into construction, it will at least drive three or four million projects, and the pace of national construction will make great strides forward. But, alas, just now because of the concentration The inflation curbed by exchanging a batch of expired bills is about to rise again, what a headache! There are so many large-scale infrastructure projects in the country, and it is not easy to recycle the currency!"

Everyone at the meeting nodded in agreement when they heard the words. As an economy that has been developing rapidly all year round, no matter how hard the government on the east coast tries and how many measures it takes, the country's inflation has never been curbed.The weighted price index of a package of goods that the May agency counts every month has risen year-on-year and month-on-month. more than 6.5 yuan), in order to cope with the purchasing power of ordinary people's wages that are getting less and less.

However, raising wages is also a double-edged sword, because it will increase the domestic labor costs in the East Coast and reduce the competitiveness of East Coast products, but in today's general environment, what can be done about this.As long as we continue to emigrate and continue to build infrastructure, we will inevitably endure long-term inflation.As for the domestic business owners on the east coast, they can only adapt to this unfavorable environment and constantly seek ways to reduce costs - such as introducing low-wage migrant workers, such as improving the degree of mechanized production of products, such as obtaining cheaper raw materials , For example, obtain the dumping market of commodities that you can exclusively enjoy, and so on.

Governing a big country is like cooking a small fish. The rulers on the east coast have really realized this sentence more deeply now. It is so troublesome to govern a small country with a population of less than 30. If the population grows to 50 or 100 million in the future , The scale of industry and agriculture has expanded to ten times, twenty times today, can they still be competent?

(End of this chapter)