"Your Majesty, you say you want to give England, France, Holland, and Portugal a taste of sweetness? But how can there be so much sweetness to give? ”

It was Zheng Zhilong, the richest man in the Ming Dynasty, who spoke, but not at the court meeting, but at the dinner table - after the court meeting, Zheng Zhilong and Luo Dagong both "stayed in the hall", and Emperor Zhu invited them to lunch.

"Your Majesty," Grand Duke Luo also spoke, "isn't this sweetness Luzon?" Do we want the British, French, Dutch, and Portuguese condominium to govern Manila? ”

Zhu Cihong laughed when he heard this, and said to Luo Dagong: "Grand Duke, you, the secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, still don't know enough about foreign affairs!" Can Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Portugal jointly govern Manila? They must not fight? And Manila is still in the hands of the Spaniards!

This is what I said! ”

As he spoke, Zhu Cihong took out a "one tael of silver" silver coins minted by the Maritime Bank and placed it on the dining table.

"One tael of silver" is a kind of silver coin weighing one tael and containing about ninety percent of silver, which was not issued by the Ming Household Department, but was issued by the Household Department on behalf of the two major banks of maritime merchants and salt merchants. In addition to the "one tael of silver", there is also a "half tael of silver", which is also a hand-typed silver coin issued by two banks.

In addition, the two banks are also entrusted by the household department to cast money, one side of the money has the words "Hongxing Tongbao", and the other side is the name of the foundry bank.

Of course, the Ministry of Household entrusted the firm to mint silver coins and make money, not to allow private minting, but to let the Ming Dynasty have the most strength, but also the most advanced, the most efficient two "imperial banks" to share a little profit from the benefits of coinage, and at the same time bear a lot of trouble caused by coinage - of course, coinage is troublesome, not mechanical, but hand-made, and silver coins are particularly troublesome!

All kinds of forgeries, all kinds of private casting, all kinds of destruction (scraping off a little silver), endlessly, there is no way to prohibit it!

Therefore, the money (copper coin) created by the two banks is the legal tender recognized by the Ministry of Households, but the "one tael of silver" and "half a tael of silver" are not legal tender, and the legal tender is "bank tael".

That is, silver with a purity of more than ninety percent, is calculated in "taels".

However, these "bank two" will not be minted into large silver ingots and sent to the household treasury to hide, but will be stored in the silver on the account of the two banks.

The exchange price of the bank's two and one tael of silver coins will be determined according to the silver content of one tael of silver, and is currently fixed at one to one.

Such an arrangement seems to be a bit redundant, and it is not more convenient to issue silver coins directly from the household? But Emperor Zhu was well aware of the integrity and efficiency of the Ming bureaucracy...... If you give them the errand of minting silver coins, you may be minting and minting, and the silver will be gone!

Moreover, no one dares to question the adulteration of silver coins issued by the household department, and the financial system with the two major banks as the core has no incentive to eliminate private minting and adulterated currency, and may even join the ranks of private minted silver coins.

Therefore, Zhu Cihong simply contracted the minting rights, and then collected the seigniorage tax according to the amount of coinage, and at the same time pushed the responsibility of maintaining the silver coin market to the two banks and the small banks, money banks, pawnshops and other financial institutions associated with them.

In the financial system of the Ming Dynasty, the two banks are the main gates, controlling the capital flow and interest rates of a bunch of small and medium-sized financial institutions below. Therefore, the two banks can easily use their monopoly position to isolate private, counterfeit, and broken silver coins from the financial system—these silver coins can only be recovered by the two banks at a discount according to their weight and purity, and cannot be deposited in banks or banks to become base money.

These "one tael of silver" and "half good silver" were only used as large amounts of cash in the industrial and commercial activities of the Ming Dynasty. And the real big deal, still have to use "bills", and all "bills" are based on "bank two" as a unit.

In addition, the cash part of the tax and land rent taken by the Ming government is also calculated in "bank two", so taxpayers must deposit the corresponding silver coins, silver, and money in banks and money banks in exchange for bills, and then hand them over to the tax officials.

During the entire tax payment process, the tax collector (Gunda Division) could not see the silver and copper coins......

Another advantage of using the "bank tael" as a monetary unit is that it is easy to establish an internationally accepted monetary system.

Even Spain, the Western imperialists who are at war with the Great Tomorrow Dynasty, cannot fail to recognize the "silver taels"!

As long as everyone recognizes the silver two, then the Great Tomorrow Dynasty will be able to take advantage of its economic scale advantage and the efficiency and perfection of the financial system to gradually establish a global financial system with itself as the core!

"Your Majesty," Zheng Zhilong looked at the silver coin, already understanding Emperor Zhu's thoughts, "Do you want to lend money to Britain, France, the Netherlands, Portugal and other countries?" ”

"Hehe," Zhu Cihong smiled, "The poor ghosts of Britain, France, and Portugal all stretch their necks and wait to borrow silver!" Without this benefit, we can take advantage of the Americas? ”

Emperor Zhu said again: "As for the Netherlands, they are rich!" Although it can't be compared with our Daming, but with the size of the Netherlands, they definitely have a lot of money. However, there is also the difficulty of having a lot of money...... The most difficult thing for the Dutch is to ship so much money to us! A few years ago, when the Anglo-Dutch War was fought, I don't know how many ships loaded with silver were sunk by the British, snatched away, and suffered heavy losses! The Dutch would be happy if there was a bank that could do the business of sending money between Europe and the Celestial Empire. How much trouble do you save them? ”

In today's East-West trade, the East has a constant surplus, while the West has a constant deficit.

The Netherlands, which accounted for the largest share of the trade between East and West, had to transport a lot of silver to the East every year, and this work was time-consuming, laborious, and dangerous—even without English privateers, there were storms and waves at sea, and sometimes they ran aground and got lost!

It would be very beneficial for Dutch merchants to have a bank that could be trusted by the whole of Europe to carry out exchange business across continents.

And this bank can also turn itself into an international settlement bank by doing business with the two major banks of Daming and local banks in Europe.

In addition, the long-distance remittance in this year cannot be completed by sending an electronic signal, and someone must carry the bill across the ocean, so it will take a long time to complete the exchange. In this process, the bank will not pay interest to the customer, not only does not pay interest, but also charges a handling fee for remittance, and if it involves currency exchange, it has to charge another ......

You can imagine how big the profit margin is!

And there are so many chaotic parties in Europe now, almost every country has them!

There is a stone-throwing party in France, a Catalan rebel party in Spain, a royal party in Britain (the Cromwells had to run away after the royal party came to power), and the Orange family in the Netherlands, not to mention the Holy Roman Empire.

So all kinds of chaotic parties are not allowed to deposit some money in foreign banks?

And on the stage, who knows if it will turn into a chaotic party and go into exile? You can't go wrong with saving some money in a foreign bank, right?

For all kinds of chaotic parties and preparatory chaotic parties in Europe, it should be absolutely reassuring to save money in the bank endorsed by the Ming Dynasty of the Eastern Silver Empire, right?

Therefore, Emperor Zhu did not have to take money from the household account to lend to foreigners, it was enough to borrow it with the money they had saved......

"Old Taishan," Zhu Cihong said to Zheng Zhilong, "you have a good relationship with the Dutch, you go to Bruce. Fan. Diemen Tell me...... This bank can give the Dutch East India Company 20% of the shares, guarantee to make money, and wait for dividends. ”

The Dutch East India Company had to be tied up, they were big customers in the international exchange business!

"Lao Chen, let's go to Nanjing."

Emperor Zhu then said to Luo Dagong: "Grand Duke, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will send a clever person to Japan...... The Xiamen Hou said that the Tokugawa family wanted to send a princess to me, which seemed to be quite beautiful, but I was not very beautiful, so I couldn't accept it, unless this marriage could be beneficial to the union of the two families! ”