In the second year of the Great Zhou Republic, the eighth day of the fifth month.

On the fourth day after the Fourth Movement of the First Day of May, Wu Haogu, who was far away in Tianjin, received a report written by Yang Jian.

Yang Jian was born in the Great Song Dynasty court and had many friends in the Imperial City Division. Therefore, it is easy to find out the general situation of the incident - the chaos on the fourth day of the fifth month was caused by the fourth school student Fu Que wrote a letter against Wu Haowen's betrayal of the country.

Somehow, the book suddenly turned into a large-scale protest. At least 100,000 people in Kaifeng Prefecture participated in the protest against the profiteers' manipulation of housing prices and grain prices. In the course of the protests, there were also many clashes with the soldiers of Kaifeng Prefecture. The scene was out of control for a while, and in the end, the imperial court arrested Wu Haowen and seized several commercial houses that were said to have manipulated housing prices and prices; On the one hand, the new army was mobilized to suppress the ammunition. to suppress the chaos.

"I'm afraid it's going to be messy!"

Tianjin, Führer's Palace, large study. Wu Haogu was having a small meeting with a few henchmen to discuss the news of the turmoil in Kaifeng Mansion that he had just gotten.

Wu Haogu sighed and was the first to put forward his opinion.

"How so?" Mi Youren smiled, "Isn't it already flat?" ”

"Hehe," Wu Haogu smiled, "Ping?" It is clear that the imperial court has given in.

Now that those mobs in Kaifeng Mansion have seen their strength, will they still be as obedient as before? Moreover, the prices of Kaifeng Mansion are expensive, and the housing prices are high, which cannot be solved in a while. In the future, there will be a lot of trouble.

Yuan Hui, Da Lang, we have to withdraw from Kaifeng Mansion. ”

"Führer," Su Dalang, who also had a large investment in Kaifeng Mansion, frowned and asked, "Is it really that serious?" The money in Kaifeng Mansion is easy to earn! ”

The handicraft industry in Kaifeng Province is underdeveloped, and ordinary people can't make much money. But the real estate and financial industries are very well developed and are a place to make a lot of money.

Wu Haogu smiled: "You can't make all the money, let's leave a bite for others...... The house price in Kaifeng Mansion can't rise for too long! We have to find a way out of it, and everything we can sell is sold. Draw the gold and silver back to Tianjin Mansion, it looks like Tianjin is still good. ”

The chaos in Kaifeng Mansion made Wu Haogu see the weakness of the Northern Song Dynasty. Not only externally weak, but also internally. There is simply no power to suppress the intellectuals of the new or half-new and half-old style, represented by the four students.

Moreover, the imperial court of Kaifeng Mansion did not dare to rashly use the new army to suppress the chaos in Kaifeng Mansion, because almost all the new troops stationed in Kaifeng Mansion were composed of locals - recruiting strong men from other towns could suppress the people of Kaifeng Mansion, but recruiting soldiers from other towns was too easy to be controlled by officers and was too dangerous to the imperial court.

Unless the imperial court abolishes the officers of the new army, and then restores the tradition that the forbidden army soldiers will not know......

But now that the new army of the Song State has a tail, it is not easy to abandon.

Therefore, the court of the Great Song Dynasty has now fallen into the revolutionary trap that Wu Haogu wanted to avoid as much as possible. On the one hand, the imperial court must rely on the Kaifeng new army to defend; On the other hand, the Kaifeng New Army was influenced by the new officers and Kaifeng citizens.

Most of the new-style officers of the Song Dynasty were poor, and the citizens of Kaifeng Mansion were also living in difficulty.

If this trend continues, Kaifeng Mansion is likely to become a cradle of revolution in the future!

If it really becomes like that, what is the investment value of real estate in Kaifeng Mansion? Who could afford to invest in real estate in Paris during the era of the French Revolution?

"But where do you put such a large sum of gold and silver?" Su Dalang pondered and asked, "The land and real estate held by Wanjiaxing alone are worth more than 10 million!" If you sell all of them and repay the loan, you can also withdraw seven or eight million taels, which can be exchanged for at least 1 million taels of gold. ”

"How much gold and silver have we saved now?" Wu Haogu asked.

"There are about 31 million taels of silver in the Dazhou Bank, and another 2 million taels of gold." Pan Xingye, general manager of Dazhou Bank, also attended today's meeting.

The Da Zhou Bank, which he managed, was not open to the public, but a bank of a bank, that is, a central bank. According to the Civil Code of the Republic of the Great Zhou Dynasty, all banks, pledge stores, gold, silver, silk and silk shops, and Changsheng warehouses that operate in the territory of the Republic of the Great Zhou Dynasty (including the mainland and the colonies) are opened. It is necessary to convert 20% of the absorbed deposits into gold and silver, and deposit them in the Dazhou Bank as a reserve.

In addition, the government of the Republic of Da Zhou will also convert the treasury gold into gold and silver and deposit it in the Bank of Da Zhou.

Although the Dazhou Bank, which collected a large amount of gold and silver, did not directly participate in the trading of lending and interest, it also had its own way of making money - remote remittance and gold and silver exchange.

Remote remittance refers to the remittance business from Tianjin to Xingzhou (the residence of the Nanyang Metropolitan Protectorate), including copper coins and gold, which can be remitted from Tianjin to Xingzhou. Of course, silver can be remitted, but very few people do. Because the price of silver is expensive in the east and cheap in the west, in the current Tianjin City, one tael of gold can be exchanged for six taels of silver. In Xingzhou, one tael of gold can be exchanged for eight taels of silver. If you go to the Republic of Sinai between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, one tael of gold can be exchanged for ten taels of silver. In Western Europe, one tael of gold could be exchanged for twelve taels of silver.

The huge difference in gold and silver between the East and the West has become an opportunity for the Great Zhou Bank to make a profit. Every autumn, the Dazhou Bank would take advantage of the opportunity of the navy's gunboats cruising south to send a certain amount of gold to the gunboats and transport it to its branch in Nanyang Xingzhou. The gold was then exchanged for silver in Xingzhou and shipped back to Tianjin in the spring of the following year.

The Jingdong Bank, controlled by Ji Yi, and the Nanyang Bank, which was run by the Nanyang Metropolitan Protectorate, would ship the gold of Xingzhou to the West, exchange it for silver, and then ship it back.

Through this process, the price of gold and silver between the East and the West is slowly approaching. And a large amount of silver has also gathered in the vault of the Dazhou Bank in Tianjin.

"There is also a lot of silver in the vault of the Bank of Tianjin," Wu Haogu nodded and said, "There are about twenty or thirty million, right?" Daxiangguo Temple Changsheng Treasury and Pan Kee Bank also have a lot of silver on hand...... Add up several aspects, if not 100 million, there are 80 million. It's time to issue silver coins. ”

The plan to issue silver coins was formulated long before Wuhao Gu seized Yandi. At that time, the plan was for Bank of Tianjin and Jingdong Bank to jointly mint "one or two" coins.

One tael weighs one tael and is minted with silver, of which 85% is silver and 15% is copper. The exchange with silver is one tael of coins for one tael of silver. The exchange price with copper coins is one or two coins for 1540 Wen, which is less than two yuan.

In other words, the seigniorage of one or two coins is 10% (there is wear and tear and labor in the minting process), which is a stable source of income for the bank. If you can mint all the silver that can be collected in the market into one or two silver coins, you can also have tens of millions of income. For private casting, there is no benefit. At least "real silver private casting" is not possible.

However, Wu Haogu's purpose in launching one or two coins is not just to obtain seigniorage - it is not possible to mint hundreds of millions of silver coins in a year or two, and most of them will have to be busy for ten years. So the benefits that can be obtained every year are not very many.

The purpose of Wuhao Gutui silver coins is mainly to provide an "anchor" for the issuance of "bank bills".

The so-called bank bills are the evolved version of personal acquaintances. That is, convertible banknotes issued by banks, or it can also be seen as a negotiable, convertible interest-free bond.

This kind of banknote is different from the banknotes issued by the central bank in later generations, and is issued by commercial banks. Without the endorsement of the central bank, it is all guaranteed by the credit of the commercial banks themselves.

Of course, in the Middle Ages, not many people exchanged real money for bank bills, regardless of who issued them. Because gold and silver are good money, bank bills are bad money, only bad money drives out good money, and few good money takes the initiative to exchange it for bad money. At least until the eviction is complete, such a situation will not happen on a large scale.

However, bank bills can still be popular, because this kind of convertible and negotiable notes have the effect of amplifying the base currency and lowering the market interest rate.

Gold and silver, as the base currency, are very small in quantity. If there are no bank bills to amplify, then the market must be constantly tightening. High interest rates and deflation will coexist, which is extremely detrimental to the development of capitalism.

Bank bills, on the other hand, can be used as a tool for bank credit – banks lend bank bills to create more liquidity, thereby lowering interest rates and activating the market.

"Da Song's money is about to collapse!" Wu Haogu pondered, "So we also have to collect silver coins and bank bills, otherwise the market interest rate will have to rise unbelievably." Silver coins will be issued within the year, and bank bills will be issued next year...... Bank bills are pegged to silver coins, and one or two coins are exchanged for one or two bonds, which can only be issued by qualified large banks. ”

"Will the money fall?" Pan Xingye was incredulous, "Unlikely, right? ”

Su Dalang didn't believe it either, "Führer, the money is good, and the exchange of copper coins is one to one." How can it collapse? ”

"Of course it will collapse!" Wu Haogu smiled, "What is Qian Yin linked to?" Salt, tea, wine, iron? He shook his head, "It's not enough, it's mainly real estate, the real estate in Kaifeng Mansion." The transaction volume of real estate in Kaifeng Mansion is hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and the sale of official land casually circles millions of dollars every year. And the money sent out by the imperial court in a year can not attract more than 20 million, so it will not collapse. Unless the house in Kaifeng Mansion falls sharply! ”

"Will the house in Kaifeng Mansion fall sharply?" Wu Haogu's "first assistant" Mi Youren was stunned, "Teacher, are we going to enter Kaifeng Mansion?" ”

"Into Kaifeng Mansion?" Wu Haogu smiled, "Those knights and soldiers are screaming that they are going to fight?" Didn't you? ”

Of course, the military citizens of the Great Zhou State had a strong desire to expand, but they did not always expand, expand, and expand. Rather, it is linked to the reproduction of knights and soldiers, and before their next generation grows up, military citizens do not have too strong motivation to expand.

"If we don't fight, how can the house in Kaifeng Mansion fall?" Mi Youren said, "Teacher, for more than a hundred years, the houses in Kaifeng Mansion have basically only risen and not fallen. ”

Wu Haogu shook his head, "That's in the past!" And now, the bitter man who has no house, no money, and no wife in Kaifeng Mansion has made a revolution! ”