When Li Xuan saw this excerpt, he also realized the seriousness of the problem!

Wang Haomen was only talking about the question of what to do with so much silver, but Li Xuan found another problem from it, that is, inflation!

Today's Tang Dynasty, although it is still mainly based on agriculture, but the economic development of industry and commerce is very fast, which can be seen from the growth of industrial and commercial tax revenue, the Ministry of Taxation predicts that this year's fiscal revenue can reach 65 million taels of silver, and next year, it may increase to 70 million taels of silver.

For the time being, some newly occupied areas are not included in this fiscal revenue budget, and the northern part of Huguang and Sichuan, including part of Shaanxi, are not included.

But why was it possible to add five million taels of silver?

The agricultural tax is levied according to the number of acres, and it is impossible to increase the number of acres suddenly on a large scale, so the main driving force for the increase comes from the development of industry and commerce.

With the rapid development of industry and commerce, the turnover of money will be more rapid, the circulation of money will be more extensive, and the depreciation or appreciation of currency will have a greater impact.

Through sea trade, the annual net inflow of silver is to reach millions of silver, even if the scale of this trade remains unchanged, but ten years is tens of millions, a hundred years is hundreds of millions.

With so much silver flowing in, it will inevitably cause the depreciation of silver!

Li Xuan turned out several copies of the exchange rate of silver for gold and copper coins submitted by the Ministry of Taxation, and found that from the second year of Xuanping to the seventh year of Xuanping this year, the ratio of silver to copper coins has been depreciated from one tael of silver for one thousand Xuanping Tongbao, and depreciated to one tael of silver for nine hundred and eighty Xuanping Tongbao.

This is still the official exchange rate of the Royal Bank, and if it is a private one, it is estimated that the fluctuation will be greater.

What does this mean, this means that the value of silver has depreciated by two percent in just five years!

Although the depreciation of silver was not simply caused by the large-scale inflow of silver caused by the sea trade, a large number of gentry and landlords took out a lot of silver hidden in their homes and deposited it in the royal bank in order to invest in industry and commerce, or other investment behaviors, so that the silver circulated into the market.

There are many reasons for the depreciation of silver.

And this kind of depreciation, others may not be aware of the danger, but Li Xuan is aware of the danger!

Putting down many reports, Li Xuan stood up, walked to the window, and began to think about the depreciation of silver, as a latecomer, he knew very well that the silver standard had no future.

One of the biggest hidden dangers is that the Tang Dynasty's own silver production is not too large, the world's largest silver producing area is in the Americas, more precisely North America, the Spaniards and Portuguese, in the Americas and their cheap way, got boatloads of silver, and then transported it into Europe, part of which also inevitably flowed into the Tang Dynasty through maritime trade.

In this trading process, it seems that the Tang Dynasty has earned a lot of silver, but it has also caused the depreciation of domestic silver, and it has caused an equally serious problem, that is, Wang Haomen proposed: Why do we want so much silver?

Doesn't it look good in a silver vault?

Silver, its greatest value is to be used as currency, it is valuable when it is spent, and it is just a bunch of useless metals if it is not spent, and at the same time, those Europeans can continuously obtain a large amount of cheap silver from the Americas, and then exchange it for genuine products from the Tang Dynasty.

The more Li Xuan thought about it, the more he felt a loss!

It's like later generations when Americans printed some dollar bills to use as currency, and then other countries were able to print a lot of dollars to buy things from the United States.

Li Xuan's ideal overseas trade system was that other countries exchanged agricultural and mineral products for industrial products of the Tang Dynasty.

The Tang Dynasty regarded overseas markets as a source of raw materials and a dumping ground for industrial products.

Instead of turning the Tang Dynasty into a dumping ground for silver from other countries.

It seems that it is time to start preparing for the gold standard!

Datang can't control silver in a short period of time, and the overall output of silver is relatively large, and it is difficult to completely control it.

However, gold is produced in lower quantities worldwide, and as a precious metal, it is more difficult to depreciate and its value is stronger, and it is impossible for foreign countries to buy things with large quantities of cheap gold.

In the later period, it slowly transitioned to the indirect gold standard, and finally to the credit standard.

In short, silver is a thing that can be got rid of as soon as possible!

However, it is not easy to implement the gold standard, first of all, it needs enough gold reserves, and today, Datang's main financial institution, the Royal Bank, has precious metal reserves, most of which are silver, and the amount of gold is still relatively small.

And the matter of reserving gold will not be in a hurry for a while.

But it doesn't matter, since Li Xuan is aware of this problem, then he will let the people below do it, and it is a big deal to spend more than ten years to reserve gold.

At the same time, he accurately used administrative means to intervene in the sea trade market, and the collection of various commodities and tariffs in the future is no longer denominated in silver, but in gold.

Li Xuan made a decision, and directly issued a holy decree that in the future, all import and export commodities and tariffs will be denominated in gold!

Many people actually don't understand this executive order, and they don't even understand why such a seemingly meaningless decree is issued, and is there a difference between denominated in gold and denominated in silver?

It doesn't matter if outsiders don't understand, anyway, they just need to do what Li Xuan said.

At the same time, Li Xuan also began to instruct the Royal Bank to reserve gold as much as possible and reduce the outflow of gold coins, and gave it to the three official trading companies, Datang Nanyang Trading Company, Datang Dongyang Trading Company, and Datang Western Trading Company, so that they could collect as much gold as possible when conducting overseas trade, instead of silver.

Among them, the Datang Toyo Trading Company is the focus of Li Xuan's attention, because the current Fusang is a very important gold producing area, and the price of gold in it is relatively low, relatively speaking, the price of silver and copper coins is relatively high.

Many merchants transported copper coins by boat, and then brought back boatloads of gold.

At the same time, more imports are encouraged, especially the import of various raw materials, and the silver earned through trade is respent in exchange for various agricultural products or industrial raw materials.

In short, Li Xuan hoped that in the next few years, in the foreign trade of the Tang Dynasty, he would not stupidly move a boatload of silver back to the silver treasury, but would buy a large number of raw materials and agricultural products.

Trade surpluses, sometimes not a good thing for economic development!

Because you make so much silver, and you don't spend it, it's actually useless!

This is the difference between Li Xuan and the other courtiers!

And through this matter, it also made Li Xuan notice Wang Haomen, and after reading this person's resume, he found that this person is quite interesting, born in a Guangdong gentry family, his parents died since he was a child, because he is not a son of a long house, but a partial brother, so he is nominally the young master of a big family, but there is no difference between living in an ordinary well-off family.

This man was brought up by a servant!

So this person is not like many powerful children, he has all kinds of bad habits, he studies quite hard, he was admitted to Xiucai when he was a teenager, and he was admitted to Qianming Xiucai at the age of twenty-six.

After participating in the first Ming Dynasty examination and falling to Zhongshan, when he was about to take the second examination, the Tang Dynasty won Guangdong, and then a year later, this person participated in the second imperial examination of the Tang Dynasty and finally ranked second.

A few years later, this person has successfully climbed to the key position of director of the financial department of the Ministry of Taxation.

Although the Financial Department of the Ministry of Taxation is not as powerful as the Department of Grain Collection, its actual power is not small, and its main functions and powers are to manage large and small financial institutions in the country and maintain the stability of the domestic financial system.

At the same time, the power to issue currency is also vested in the department, which directly manages the local mint.

In fact, not only the Financial Department, but in fact, every department of the Ministry of Taxation is quite important, and the person who can sit firmly as the director of the first department of the Ministry of Taxation is not a simple role.

Although this Wang Haomen was born as a gentry, strictly speaking, he is also considered a poor family, at least in his studies and career, his family did not give him much help, on the contrary, he has now become the leader of the Wang family.

When the import and export goods and tariffs were denominated in gold, Li Xuan also summoned him several times to ask some financial questions, and found that this person's understanding of finance is not bad, although limited by the times and knowledge, the understanding is relatively primitive, but it is also quite rare.

And after being summoned by Li Xuan several times in a row, Wang Haomen himself also knew that he might have entered the attention of the Son of Heaven, and he was working harder to promote the gold pricing.

And this makes Li Xuan's impression of him even better, such a person, although he is a traditional scholar, but he has worked in the Financial Department of the Ministry of Taxation for so long, and his understanding of finance is not bad.

Maybe in a few more years, it can be reused.

Speaking of which, there are really a lot of talents emerging in the Ministry of Taxation in recent years, Wang Haomen is just one of them, because of the particularity of the Ministry of Taxation, the ability requirements for officials are very high, and at the same time, the promotion within the Ministry of Taxation is also more particular about real materials.

Chen Lifu is a typical example, if it weren't for the ruthless means, how could he have been promoted so quickly, and he also became the acting director of the inspection department.

Wang Haomen is another typical example.

But it's also funny to say, as the most powerful institution in the Tang Dynasty, most of the officials in it are actually not new-style officials, but officials who are traditional scholars, Chen Lifu and Wang Haomen.

And these officials who were born as traditional scholars were the most ruthless officials in the Tang Dynasty against the gentry and landlords.

On the contrary, the officials of the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises, the Ministry of Industry, and other departments, which have the most doctoral backgrounds, more often maintain a friendly attitude towards the gentry and landlord class, and advocate co-optation and division.

However, the officials on the side of the Ministry of Taxation are eager to turn the landlords and gentry all over the world into their own achievements in promoting and making a fortune!