Empress Liu used rogue means to force Zhang Juhan and others to give up their original plans, but the problem of financial collapse had to be solved.

Although Li Cunmiao is incompetent in governing the country, he is not confused at all, and knows that relieving the victims, especially pacifying the soldiers, is a major matter of the country and cannot be ignored.

Now the treasury is empty, and although the inner treasury has money, he is reluctant to use it; So in the face of the grim situation, he suddenly felt a big head.

In fact, Li Cunmiao at this time in history also faced severe financial problems, and even when he sent troops to destroy Shu, the army did not prepare enough grain and grass, and relied on the capture of the grain and grass of the Shu army along the way, which destroyed the Shu Kingdom.

If Shu held the pass and did not fight with the Tang army, the Later Tang army would be short of food and grass, let alone destroy Shu, and it would be a question whether they could retreat with their whole body.

After that, the Tang Dynasty was able to temporarily survive the financial crisis, and it all relied on a large amount of money and grain seized from Shu to give him blood transfusion.

However, now the Later Tang Dynasty did not have Shu to give him a blood transfusion, so he had to find another way to solve the problem.

Just when Li Cunmiao had a headache, the servant Jingjin suddenly made a suggestion: "Your Majesty, the villain heard that Wu has a precedent of issuing treasury bonds since the Huainan period, and in the past 20 years, whenever Wu Guo's treasury is empty, it will issue treasury bonds to the people to obtain income. If the state of Wu can do this, why can't Your Majesty? ”

"Borrowing money from the people?" Li Cunmiao's expression was shocked, and he was immediately overjoyed: "Yes, this idea is really good." However, as the Son of Heaven and rich all over the world, I have to borrow money from my subjects to live, wouldn't it be a joke if it spread? ”

Jing Jin said with a smile: "Your Majesty is too worried, then Wu has been implementing this policy for more than 20 years, but Wu's national strength is getting stronger and stronger, and the territory under his control is getting bigger and bigger. ”

Li Cunmiao listened to it and thought deeply, he was originally a Shatuo person, and he didn't pay so much attention to face, as long as he could get real benefits, what if he lost some face?

What's more, now he can't think of any other way to solve his current financial difficulties.

The only thing that worries him is that now that the people have suffered from the disaster, and everyone has no surplus food in their hands, who wants to buy government bonds?

Jing Jin said with a smile: "Your Majesty, of course those Shengdou people don't have extra money and food, but they have them in various places!" ”

"You mean the marshals and assassins? They have a surplus of food, but what should be the interest on? I heard that the interest paid by Wu Guo for issuing treasury bonds is not low! Li Cunmiao hesitated.

Those marshals and assassins are no better than ordinary people, if the interest rate is set low, I am afraid that they will not buy it; However, if the interest rate is too high, it will be a large expense for future debt repayment.

Jing Jin said disapprerovingly: "Your Majesty, as a king, encounters difficulties, and the marshals from all over the country should do their best to help, this is the duty of the courtiers." Now that Your Majesty has issued them treasury bonds, and when you have overcome the current difficulties, and then you will return all the money and grain you have borrowed, how can you ask Your Majesty for interest? ”

"If His Majesty issues a treasury bond, the villain is willing to take out all his savings to buy it, and he will not need to repay it in the future. Even the villains have done this, presumably those ministers won't even be inferior to the villains, right? ”

Li Cunmiao was extremely happy when he heard this, and said, "Very good!" It seems that you are really loyal to me, and only let you be a servant, which is really a bit condescending! ”

The next day, Li Cunmiao convened hundreds of officials of the imperial court and announced that he would issue treasury bonds following the example of Wu.

Although there is no interest, and Li Cunmiao did not say what will be used as collateral, but Li Cunmiao, as the Son of Heaven, has openly borrowed money from his courtiers, and hundreds of officials, marshals and assassins from all over the country have to express their thoughts and pay for it.

Soon, the financial crisis of the Later Tang Dynasty was alleviated.

……

The news of the famine in Hebei and the financial difficulties encountered by the Later Tang Dynasty was soon heard by Wu State spies.

In Luoyang City, Yang Wu was also discussing financial matters with Luo Zhixiang at this time.

Compared with the post-Tang finances, which were in a state of collapse, Wu's financial situation was naturally much better.

In this battle to destroy Shu, Wu not only did not consume much grain, but after capturing Chengdu, the harvest was quite abundant, and the cash accumulated in the treasury of Shu alone was more than three million yuan, and if other materials were added to the seized, the harvest would be even more.

In addition, it is now October, and the money and grain collected from the summer harvest have gradually been transported to the government treasury, so now the finances of the state of Wu are not only not tight, but have become more substantial.

However, the enrichment of the treasury does not mean that there are no problems, in fact, at this time, Yang Wu was discussing with Luo Zhixiang about a major reform of fiscal taxation.

The first major reform is to change the current overly centralized tax policy.

In the Huainan era, when Yang Xingmi was still alive, in order to weaken the local power as much as possible and strengthen the centralization, Yang Wu used strong means to collect the local financial power.

Except for the necessary part of the local tax revenue, the rest must be sent to Guangling for overall allocation.

In this way, even if the assassins and generals in various places have the power of the army, their logistics supply has to rely on the center, which eliminates the possibility of local forces to sit on the throne to the greatest extent.

In the following two decades, Wu relied on a highly centralized financial system and various other means to ensure the centralization of power in Wu, allowing Yang Wu to concentrate on the outside world without worrying about internal turmoil.

However, there are two sides to everything, and Yang Wu's system is actually modeled after the financial system of the Northern Song Dynasty in history, so while inheriting the benefits brought by this system, it is inevitable that he will inherit the disadvantages brought by this system.

Historically, the Northern Song Dynasty's finances were too centralized, and as a result, the local government was weakened too much, so that whether it was facing foreign invasions, natural disasters, or building some large projects, they could only rely on the imperial court, but the local government did nothing.

In addition, the previous policy was to collect most of the local revenue to the imperial court, but it was impossible for the local government to spend money without spending money, and in order to cope with the expenses, many local officials had to set up various names to collect taxes, which only increased the burden on the people.

Now the state of Wu is still quite strong, so I don't see any problems, but if it lasts for a long time, the problem of the place being overly weakened will be highlighted.

Therefore, Yang Wu thought that now that Wu's efforts to weaken local forces have basically succeeded, and the majesty of the imperial court has also been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, coupled with the fact that the territory controlled by Wu is getting bigger and bigger, it is difficult to control it by relying on the imperial court alone, so the local finances should be appropriately loosened.

Yang Wu decided to carry out a tax-sharing system, specifically, fifty percent of the tax revenue of each state was handed over to the imperial court, and once the transaction was made to the provinces, the remaining forty percent remained in the local state capital.

According to the previous fiscal policy, the annual tax revenue of the local government had to be handed over to the imperial court except for the necessary expenses, but now nearly half of the revenue is kept in the local government.

Therefore, after the reform, the local fiscal revenue will inevitably increase by a large margin, and the fiscal revenue of the imperial court will decrease by a large margin.

In order to cooperate with this set of system reforms, some of the corresponding expenditures that were originally responsible for the imperial court must of course be transferred to the local government at this time.

For example, in the past, the Xiangjun who was responsible for public security in various localities was responsible for all the military salaries and supplies of the imperial court, and after the reform, the local government will be responsible.

Of course, in order to avoid the re-expansion of local forces, Yang Wu also made some restrictions on the number of troops in various places.

In addition to the introduction of the tax-sharing system, the second major reform is the resumption of the collection of cash.

At the beginning of the Huainan period, commerce was not developed, the circulation of cash in the market was insufficient, and every year when the harvest season came, some unscrupulous profiteers took the opportunity to suppress grain prices, causing great losses to farmers.

Although this is a little more troublesome, it is good for the people.

However, the expropriation of physical goods is not a long-term solution after all, and the expropriation of cash is inevitable.

And with the passage of time, especially the development of Wu business, it is time to resume the collection of cash.

As for the third reform, that is, the opening of the state bank, that is, the bank of later generations.

Or it should not be called reform, but rather an attempt.

With the development of commerce, the problem of too heavy metal currency is becoming more and more serious, and the money has always weighed more than 20 catties, and sometimes when you go to the street to buy something, you have to carry dozens of catties of coins on your back, which is obviously too inconvenient.

So even if Yang Wu doesn't take the initiative to promote, paper money will appear sooner or later.

And now that Yang Wu has taken the initiative to issue banknotes, he can take the initiative to plan and take countermeasures.

The first point is anti-counterfeiting, and at this point, Yang Wu decided to use the watermark technology of later generations.

Watermarking technology was invented in the last years of the Tang Dynasty, but it is not widely used, and now Yang Wu uses it as a banknote anti-counterfeiting, which will definitely greatly increase the cost of counterfeiting.

In addition, the pattern of banknotes and printing inks should also be optimized, in short, as far as possible in terms of technical anti-counterfeiting.

In addition to anti-counterfeiting, another more important issue is how to ensure the stability of the value of banknotes.

In response to this problem, Yang Wu's idea was to implement a direct introduction of the gold standard.

In recent years, Wu has frantically plundered gold from overseas, especially the gold mines found in Luzhou and Sado Island in Wa State, which allowed Wu to obtain a large amount of gold; Coupled with the conscious purchase of gold in China in the past few years, Wu's gold reserves have reached a certain level, and it can barely implement the gold standard.

That is to say, according to the parity of gold, the imperial court issued paper money in the unit of "guan", how much gold reserves, how much paper money was issued, and at the same time announced that paper money can be exchanged with gold, which can ensure the stability of the currency value as much as possible.

However, even if the gold standard is implemented, there is no guarantee that there will be no problems.

After all, paper money seems to cost nothing, but it can be exchanged for a steady stream of things, and such a money-making weapon is extremely tempting for anyone.

Now Yang Wu, Luo Zhixiang and others are okay, after all, they know the stakes here, and they will not issue banknotes indiscriminately; But who can guarantee that future emperors will not disregard the lives of the people in the world in order to satisfy their own selfish desires?

So for this problem, Yang Wu's idea is to bring in private capital for supervision.

In other words, the money bank responsible for issuing banknotes not only has official capital in it, but also private capital joins in, so that the official and private supervision can reduce the possibility of indiscriminate issuance of banknotes by future generations to a certain extent.

Of course, the system is dead after all, no matter how well Yang Wu stipulates the system, it is difficult to guarantee that there will be no problems in the future.

In fact, there can never be a system that can guarantee that there will be no problems at any time, and the most important thing is that future generations should be able to deeply understand the consequences of indiscriminate issuance of paper money.

Therefore, Yang Wu decided that when the imperial examination and the education of the princes and grandchildren were carried out, a certain amount of financial knowledge must be added, so that they can have a certain economic acumen and not turn over some low-level mistakes.

Each of the three reforms is extremely important, and even Yang Wu has to be cautious.

After discussing with Luo Zhixiang, he successively discussed with other important ministers, and finally decided to carry out a pilot project in the Jiangnan region, where industry and commerce are the most developed, in order to find out the problems that will be encountered as much as possible, and then gradually promote it throughout the country after the trial.

……

In mid-November, the good news came from the reuse of firewood for the conquest of Dachanghe, and the Wu army engaged Zheng Renmin's army in Dading City, south of Lizhou, and achieved a great victory, killing more than 5,000 enemy troops and capturing more than 3,000 people, and its own losses were relatively small, and the Wu army is continuing to advance southward.

After getting the good news, Yang Wu seemed very happy.

After all, the object of this battle was not very familiar to the Wu army, and more importantly, the southwest region was densely jungled and rampant, which was an excellent battlefield for the enemy who was familiar with the local environment, and it was a completely unfamiliar place for the Wu army.

In addition, this time the Wu army did not invest many troops, only 30,000 people, and Da Changhe's troops were heard to be nearly 100,000 people, so Yang Wu was still a little worried about the war before.

However, what he didn't expect was that this good news was just the beginning, and the next battle was like the battle of Shu, the Wu army marched all the way, and soon won Ningyuan, Huichuan, Chengji and other cities.

By mid-December, the Wu army had actually approached the capital of the Great Changhe Kingdom, Yangtho Baba.

The battle went so smoothly that when the news reached Luoyang, Yang Wu was a little unconvinced, and after confirming that the news was correct, he became worried again: The enemy army is not playing a strategy to lure the enemy deeper, right?

After all, the Wu army came from afar and was not familiar with the terrain, and now the lone army went deep behind the enemy, if the rear road was cut off by the enemy, the consequences would not be a joke.

Worried in his heart, Yang Wu immediately sent an edict to Chai to be used again, reminding him that he must be cautious and not underestimate the enemy, especially to ensure the safety of the back road.

At the same time, Yang Wu sent orders to Yang Jiong, Zhou Ben and others who remained in Chengdu, asking them to immediately send additional troops to Lizhou and other places in case of accidents.

However, what made him speechless was that his edict had just been issued, and it was not long before new good news came that the Wu army had conquered the city of Yang Tho, and Zheng Renmin had been killed by his men.

With 100,000 troops, the Great Changhe Kingdom, who was always thinking about invading the Central Plains, actually died like this?

Yang Wu was puzzled, was this because Wu was too strong, or was the enemy's strength too weak?