After listening to Wang Yun's remarks, Zhu Youzhen held his chin with his hand and thought for a while, and then said thoughtfully: "So it seems that you support determining the monetary value according to the face value?" ”

Wang Yun immediately bowed his head and said: "Yes, Your Majesty, with the continuous prosperity of China's economy, the demand for currency is also rising, and the three major domestic banks and the money banks in various places are collecting and storing gold and silver in kind, which has caused the market price of gold and silver bullion to exceed the face value of a coin.

As the price of gold and silver continued to rise, some people began to steal and mint undervalued gold and silver coins for profit, while coins of full value minted by the National Mint were collected and removed from the market.

Because of the rise in the price of counterfeit money and gold and silver, paper money has also depreciated faster than we expected. Therefore, the minister thought that if he wanted people to release the coins in their hands to balance the money shortage in the market, in addition to cracking down more severely on the people who made counterfeit money, the important thing was to make these counterfeiters unprofitable, so the court took the initiative to mint coins of insufficient value, which was the best solution.

In addition, once everyone knows that the coins in their hands can only be used as currency, and cannot be stored as gold and silver of sufficient value, then the market will lose the reserve coins. This is good for alleviating the depreciation of paper money and the rise in prices..."

The phenomenon of money shortage in Chongzhen's twelfth year was actually a bit unexpected for Chongzhen. In the past, there was often a shortage of money in the Ming Dynasty, and the reason was that the commodity economy was not active enough, and the investment channels of merchants were narrow, resulting in a large amount of silver imported from overseas being hidden by wealthy households.

In addition, Zhang Juzheng implemented a whip law, which converted all the land rents and servitudes into silver, which actually caused the de facto silver standard system of the Ming Dynasty. The original silver-copper replica currency was eventually replaced by the monetization of silver.

To put it simply, after Zhang Juzheng's reforms, silver became more valuable. Because the land rent paid by the people had to be converted from copper to silver before it could be accepted by the government, it was equivalent to an additional tax for these people.

Daming is a country that does not produce silver, and the annual silver mining volume is basically only 2-30,000 taels, and the silver circulating in the market comes from overseas trade. Since the imperial court did not control the output of silver, it was natural for the wealthy merchants to choose to store silver to preserve their wealth.

In such a situation, the amount of silver in the market will become less and less, and the price of silver will become higher and higher, so the price of goods will rise rapidly.

In order to change this situation, Chongzhen came to power by encouraging overseas trade, setting up banks, and pushing up the price of gold and printing paper money, thereby suppressing the price of silver and allowing the hidden silver to circulate in the market again.

However, in the twelfth year of Chongzhen, the price of gold and silver in the market continued to rise, and there was a shortage of money again. This time the money shortage is not because of the wrong financial policy of the imperial court, but because the growth rate of the Ming Dynasty's currency has not caught up with the manufacturing capacity of the Ming Dynasty, and it has encountered a drought once in decades, so there is such a strange situation.

To put it simply, the quantity of industrial products manufactured by the Ming Dynasty was too large, and the currency circulating in the market could not buy all the industrial products. The lack of agricultural output has led to a high price of agricultural products, while the prices of industrial products have fallen below the cost.

In the final analysis, the inflow of gold and silver from overseas or external material compensation is less than the productivity level of the Ming Dynasty, which leads to the symptoms of money shortage in the market. If this state of affairs continues, it will either dampen the capital invested in industry, and secondly, it will cause mass unemployment among workers, and the scene of a great depression will emerge in the market.

In Zhu Youzhen's view, in order to solve the current situation, one is to increase the money supply, and the other is to increase the supply of materials. But in the opinion of the officials below, they believe that the problem lies mainly in the problem of counterfeit money and paper money, and it is the fact that there are too many counterfeit money and paper money in the market, which has led to the artificial storage of coins of sufficient value, thus driving up prices.

As a result, these officials believe that prices should be stabilized by putting more full-value coins on the market and reducing the number of banknotes printed. But other merchants do not see it that way, and they feel that they should put insufficient coins into the market like counterfeiters, so that the counterfeiters are unprofitable and the stockalists are not interested in stockpiling, so that the problem of money shortage can be solved.

The opinions of the two sides have been arguing, and even Zhu Youzhen has thought about it for a long time, and now he has made up his mind.

Therefore, after listening to Wang Yun's proposal, Zhu Youzhen finally determined the person in charge of promoting the resolution of this matter. He nodded and said to Wang Yun, "I still agree with your idea.

In fact, the first thing I did when I came to you today was related to the shortage of money in the market. For the time being, it is clearly unrealistic to mint enough coins of sufficient value to meet market demand in the short term.

Therefore, if you want to stabilize prices and solve the money shortage, you can issue coins that are not worth enough. However, in order for such coins to be accepted by the people and merchants, the imperial court should still give them certain guarantees, otherwise the price of these coins will soon fall below face value.

In the past, all dynasties and dynasties have issued big money when five or ten, and without exception, these big money were eventually rejected by the people. The reason for this situation is that the officials who are responsible for issuing large amounts of money are only responsible for distributing but not collecting. They forced the people to accept large amounts of money, but refused to recover it according to the face value of the large money, which was tantamount to plundering the people's wealth, and naturally it was not accepted by the people and merchants.

Therefore, if we want to issue these coins with insufficient value, we must first make it clear to the people that these coins with insufficient value can also be used to pay taxes on grain and will not be recycled for impairment. Only when the price of the coin stabilizes, the price of the banknote will also stabilize.

The first thing I would like to do to you is to promote and introduce a coinage bill to fix the exchange ratio between gold and silver bullion and coins, and to promise in the name of the state to recover coins and banknotes without limit, so as to maintain market confidence in the coins and banknotes issued by the state. ”

For the task assigned by the emperor, Wang Yun naturally readily agreed. This was not only the will of the emperor, but also the interests of the bankers.

Such a coinage bill, coupled with the previous gold bill, is equivalent to constituting a complete monetary system of the Ming Dynasty, and will no longer be as confusing to merchants as it was in the past.

The most important point, of course, is that the formal commitment of an unlimited legal currency by the state is, in a sense, a strengthening of the power of the bankers, which allows them to further detach themselves from the amount of gold and silver reserves and issue a kind of credit note that is not worth any value. This is more beneficial to bankers than the current banknotes issued in gold and silver.

After explaining the first thing, Zhu Youzhen ordered Lu Qi to make tea and send it over, and then he said the second thing, "You are the governor of the central bank, and you must also know the situation of the imperial court that is short of money now."

The current Daming seems to be safe and sound, but the inside is actually full of holes, if it is not well cared for, it is a situation of smoke everywhere.

Last year, the seven northern provinces plus Zhejiang suffered a severe drought, and the northern provinces had little rain and snow in winter, so this year does not look like a good year. In order to prevent chaos in the disaster area, the imperial court had to distribute relief food and transfer a part of the population.

Now to move a family in the Central Plains to He, Fengzhen and other places, the imperial court will spend at least 100 yuan. If they were to move to the Western Regions, Taiwan, or the South Seas, the cost would be doubled.

The imperial court had already calculated that whether it was to disperse the population pressure in the Central Plains and northern regions, or to enrich the population of the Western Regions and overseas territories, it would be necessary to invest about 10 million yuan a year in the calculation of immigration that lasted for ten years.

So the second thing is that I'm going to borrow money from you, 10 million yuan a year, for ten years. Questions? ”

The emperor himself opened his mouth to borrow money from himself, and even if there was a problem, it would become no problem. After all, Wang Yun did not lend his own money, but the money of the central bank. Taking the money from the bank to win the favor of the emperor and thus secure his position is really not a loss-making business. What's more, 10 million yuan is only 42% of the central bank's net profit last year, and it is not enough to make the shareholders of the central bank jump on their feet.

Seeing that Wang Yun agreed, Zhu You said with a good heart: "Of course, I am also a shareholder of the central bank, and the borrowing of money is to borrow money, and the procedures still have to go through the formal procedures, which will not make you embarrassed." I still have collateral for you, so I'll use Purple City as collateral..."

Before Chongzhen's words were finished, Wang Yun knelt down with sweat on his head, and hurriedly replied: "Don't dare, don't dare, with Your Majesty's golden words, what collateral do you need, this Purple City... The minister would never dare to accept it, and I think other shareholders would never have such a rebellious idea..."

Zhu Youzhen immediately waved his hand and said, "I didn't say this one, it's the one in Nanjing." You don't have to worry, there must be a collateral for this loan, otherwise I won't become a robber? ”

Wang Yun was very sad in his heart, even the Purple City in Nanjing was not something that the central bank could collect. He was a little skeptical that the emperor wanted to repair the imperial palace in Nanjing, and could not find an excuse, so he deliberately mortgaged the Purple City in Nanjing to the bank so that they could pay for the repairs.

Seeing Wang Yun's frightened appearance, Zhu Youzhen reassured: "Don't care so much, it's just for those bank shareholders to see, so no one will question whether this money should be borrowed or not."

You know, the number of shareholders in the central bank is now in the hundreds, and if I withdraw this money directly, I am afraid that it will provoke a lot of criticism, and I just want to save trouble. Don't think too much, get up first, I have one more thing to tell you to do..."I want to talk about "Bang Ming" with more like-minded people, WeChat pays attention to "excellent reading literature", chats about life, and looks for confidants~