Chapter 25: Vampires

Autumn is high and cool, and the heat of early autumn is gradually fading away.

Due to the lunar calendar, this year's National Day holiday and the Mid-Autumn Festival coincide with the past year, and the holiday has been extended to ten days, and the festival content is also extremely substantial. The only fly in the ointment is that on the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival, the capital was covered with dark clouds and a light rain, which made the moon appreciation that the Chinese citizens of Manchester City had been brewing for a long time come to naught.

This year's Manchester Food Contest almost overshadowed the National Day ceremony, not only did the number of participants and visitors continue to set records, but also brought a lot of commercial added value and brand effect to the city.

Even after the tournament ended, the lively atmosphere continued, and all kinds of Eastern and Western dishes that made a name for themselves in the tournament were put on the tables in the streets and alleys, and became the talk of Manchester City's housewives. The October issue of "Fashion & Food" magazine sold a record of 30,000 copies in Manchester City alone, and on average, almost every Manchester family has a copy!

Yunling Group, which owns a series of catering industries such as Yipinspoon Hotel, Phantom Hotel, and Qiuyun soybean milk chain, has always been the largest sponsor of the Manchester City Food Competition. Now, under the leadership of Ouyang Ling, chairman of the board of directors of the group, the organizing committee of the competition has been transformed into the "Huamei Food Association", officially debuted, and announced that the venue of the next food competition will no longer be fixed, but accept the registration competition of local municipal governments.

Manchester City made a lot of money on this year's National Day, and the city's total output of commercial retail and services is expected to increase by at least 15 percentage points in the fourth quarter. The mayors of several major cities have begun to think about winning the qualification to host the new food competition next year, especially the Yacheng City, which has long been rumored to officially replace Manchester City as the new capital of China in the next few years.

On the other hand, a social burden that the Chinese and American Cabinet was overwhelmed with was finally lifted on this year's National Day, and the distribution of National Day voucher benefits, which had lasted for 20 years, was officially terminated.

The number of individual National Day benefits distributed on a household basis is small, at a measly $3 per household. But every October, more than $700,000 is spent on National Day benefits across the country. If you add in the statutory social welfare expenses of several other important festivals, Huamei's annual civil budget will be more than 1.5 million US dollars!

This was originally a national statutory benefit promulgated by a group of "political and beautiful" young heads. The initially conceived role has become more and more ineffective over time, and has become the biggest financial burden for the authorities over the past two decades.

Now that the bill is valid for a limited time, the Congress does not hesitate to veto it unanimously. From now on, such holiday benefits will be at the discretion of each state and local government, and the Cabinet Treasury will no longer allocate a penny.

Although ordinary old citizens regret that some ugly gossip will inevitably appear in the streets and alleys, with the country's new minimum wage standard about to be officially implemented, and the business trend of discounting businesses on holidays has lasted for many years, most people still accept the reality.

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Wednesday, October 18, 1645.

The hearts of the people in the capital are still full of happiness in the warm afterglow of the National Day. The final deliberation session of the Senate and House of Representatives on the 1646 National Budget is currently under way.

According to the law, the state budget for the next fiscal year must be completed by November 1 of each year at the latest, but this year's pace is a bit delayed. However, after countless confrontations and compromises in advance, when Qi Jianjun, the speaker of the Senate, announced that the vote on the country's budget for the next year was valid and officially passed, some people, including Premier Guan Ruzhong and Central Bank Governor Qian Weichang, showed tangled expressions.

After the hard work and overtime of the cabinet budget-making team led by Guan Ruzhong, the total amount of the "1646 State Budget" finally passed by the National Assembly was only 65 million, which was 2 million less than in 1645. For the first time, there was a negative budget increase.

The reason is simple: The expansionary deficit finances implemented by Prime Minister Wu Yuan-il in the last two administrations have issued a large number of government bonds for eight consecutive years, and most of them are now in the repayment period of principal and interest. There are already signs of a mess, and someone has to clean it up.

It should be said that few people in this group have financial management experience of managing more than one million funds in the first half of their lives, especially in the past few years, when the country has grown by leaps and bounds. From Congress to the Cabinet, few people believe that the U.S. government will one day not be able to pay back the Treasury bonds that banks or ordinary people have bought.

But Huamei's development over the years has really been too strong, at least on the surface. And the price. It is the tens of millions of debts owed by Wu Yuanyi's cabinet since 1636, not including the issuance of some special treasury bonds every year to deal with various infrastructure investment gaps.

In 1645 alone, the Treasury of the Chinese and American Cabinet suffered from the repayment of 3 million debts due. This year has survived like this, and the next two years will be even more terrifying, and the total maturity of the treasury bonds with interest is as high as 8 million, whether it is the National Assembly or the Cabinet Premier Guan Ruzhong, they all feel that it is difficult to support.

Even if they know that it is a pitfall, the Diet and the Cabinet can only prepare to issue a new issue of medium- and long-term treasury bonds at the beginning of next year to tear down the east wall and make up for the west wall.

Isn't it that the countries of Europe and the Far East still owe us money, so why don't they have money to use it?

When they first became aware of the problem, some cabinet ministers or MPs were muttering, but soon the answers, namely Finance Minister Zhou Qifeng and Central Bank Governor Qian Weichang, were soon answered.

The debts owed by overseas countries to Huamei are indeed fruitful, with the combined principal and interest amounting to tens of millions, but most of them are long-term national bonds of 10 to 20 years, and there are many patients with "chronic procrastination Leppi syndrome" such as England, France, and Spain, and the total amount of principal and interest paid off by the state-owned Banco Nacional Ultramarino is about 3 million yuan every year.

The Thirty Years' War in Europe has been fought like this, and no European country or royal family has a healthy fiscal revenue, and it would be good to be able to slowly squeeze out the money under the stubborn grinding of the state-owned Atlantic Bank, what else do you want?

If the other party is forced to go on in desperation, if the Spanish royal family is declared bankrupt like the Spanish royal family at the end of the 16th century, Huamei wants to get the money back, and the political, economic and military costs will be even greater. All in all, international debt is far from being as simple as a domestic bank sending a lawyer's letter to a debtor to intimidate the court.

Huamei's national bond creditors are all in China, and the total principal and interest also exceed 20 million. About 80% of them were directly bought by commercial banks or fund institutions, and the proportion of ordinary national creditors is not low.

In other words, if a large-scale issuance or repayment of treasury bonds is made in a bookkeeping currency such as the "Central Bank Reserve Certificate" or the "State-owned Atlantic Bank Commercial Reserve Certificate", it will certainly trigger unpredictable inflation, and it will be the various private financial institutions in China and the United States that have lent money everywhere that will really suffer the big losses, and it will also damage the social and financial credit of the bookkeeping currency that Huamei has not easily built up in these years. (Note: Inflation is bad for creditors.) )

Prime Minister Kwan Ru-chung, who is the core backbone of the conservative faction, wanted to continue to issue long-term government bonds to respond, but the first to oppose it were the MPs behind the scenes of the private banks, and among them were mainly liberal and centrist bigwigs, who together passed half of the vote. It is impossible to borrow by conventional means.

Even the progressives, who are trying to maintain relations with the conservatives, are starting to watch this time, not to mention that there are many private banks and funds in the progressive camp, which is bound to be a lonely and unsuspenseful defeat for the conservatives.

From the beginning of fiscal 1646, the need to reduce the burden of repaying domestic debts was the key to whether the Diet and the Cabinet could reach a national budget.

How? One word: cut! Cut the fiscal deficit and cut the practice of issuing government bonds that has been going on for many years.

It's good to be able to budget wisely, but such a large-scale budget reduction is even negative. It will inevitably affect the overall development of the country, especially now that Huamei is entering the best period of development in history.

Immediately afterwards, the "Supplementary Budget for the State Treasury for 1646" began to be voted on again, when more than half of the hands present were raised. Guan Ruzhong simply closed his eyes.

The supplementary budget is actually a supplement to the regular budget, and the essence is still to sell dog meat on the head of a sheep, but the core content is to issue a new type of domestic bonds. Raising funds to supplement the shortfall of the country's recurrent budget items, and the total amount will reach 10 million, sounds like it will excite any ordinary person who cares about the rise and fall of the country!

This new type of government debt. It is a famous permanent treasury bond in later generations, and the creditor can only receive interest every year, but can never recover the principal.

However, according to the provisions of the supplementary budget, the issuance process of this 10 million permanent government bonds is extremely peculiar and complicated, and it is not a pure imitation of the original actions of the Bank of England.

In the first step, the Ministry of Finance commissioned the central bank to "nominally issue" the treasury bonds, which are permanent treasury bonds with an annual interest rate of 6%, which will be purchased by the state-owned Atlantic Bank as a whole.

In the second step, the state-owned Banco Nacional Nacional used the form of "state-owned Banco Nacional Nacional Commercial Bonds" to sell them to other private financial institutions or individuals in the country at an interest rate of 5%, ostensibly earning a 1% interest difference, which did not seem to be a loss.

In order to increase its attractiveness, the bond will receive a 3% coupon discount from the central bank five years after issuance, that is, institutions or individuals who buy this permanent bond, although they cannot recover the principal, can eventually get 8% annual interest, and it is a permanent income.

The third step, and the most bizarre step, when other private commercial banks purchase this "state-owned Banco Nacional Atlantino Commercial Permanent Bond", they can be licensed to issue their own private bank commercial reserve certificates to purchase, and only need to submit a deposit deposit of 20% of the purchase amount to the central bank!

As a result, although the state received up to 10 million funds at one time, for the first time in the domestic bookkeeping monetary system, commercial reserve certificates issued by private commercial banks will appear!

Previously, under the supervision of the Congressional Committee on Banking and Financial Supervision and the central bank, in addition to the central bank reserve certificates in specific financial fields, there was only an anonymous market negotiable document called the "state-owned Atlantic Bank Commercial Reserve Certificate".

This means that not only will the Treasury and the state-owned Banco Nacional Ultramarino permanently bear the interest expenses on this debt, but other private commercial banks will openly and legally touch their financial tentacles into the state-controlled bookkeeping currency.

The state-owned Banco Nacional Ultramarino, which is 100 percent controlled by the Ministry of Finance, has been spending a lot of money on the settlement of import and export trade and lending by European sovereigns for nearly a decade, and has long aroused the covetousness of the neutrals and liberals who dominate the country's private banks.

Since equity can't penetrate into it, let's make a fuss about seeking benefits! Now, the three major factions are taking advantage of the national debt problem at the same time.

As the implementation of this bizarre budget supplement, the state-owned Banco Nacional Ultramarino did not lose money on the surface, but more than half of the bank's funds were forcibly taken out to "contribute" to the state, and it became the largest debtor since the founding of the United States, saddled with a permanent debt of up to $10 million.

Permanent interest income of 8% per annum. The private bankers have bitten the necks of the state-owned Banco Nacional Ultramarino and the Treasury Department, and have summoned a large number of ordinary national creditors to take a sip of soup, and the oligarchs have naturally become the eternal vampires of drought and flood protection.

If the Central Bank of China and the United States really can't see it and wants to "pull the little brother" and engage in a reverse repo of treasury bonds, then it will just happen that the central bank will spit out a lot of real money and silver, and maybe it will continue to raise the yield of other treasury bonds, which will definitely be desperate for creditors!

No matter how dirty the inside story is, at least the state's financial budget has been effectively guaranteed. The state budget of 1646 combined theoretically reached a record 75 million, which is a very good final total. In the future, we will not face this huge amount of repayment of principal and interest on a large amount of government bonds.

More importantly, most of this large number of reserve certificates of private commercial banks will be retained in the internal settlement system of the state-owned Banco Nacional Nacional and the central bank, and even directly offset with the commercial reserve certificates issued by the state-owned Banco Nacional Ultramarino itself, without worrying about inflation caused by inflow into the market.

As for Prime Minister Guan Ruzhong, he finally found himself powerless to resist the spread of monopoly capitalism in Huamei. Starting this year, or the rest of the prime minister's tenure, he can only carry out bigger and faster reforms of the national infrastructure investment model in the struggle and compromise with the "vampires" as possible, so as to benefit as many ordinary small and medium-sized entrepreneurs as possible. In order to stabilize and promote the long-term development of the country.

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On Friday, the news that the state-owned Banco Nacional Ultramarino issued permanent commercial bonds to the public for the first time immediately sparked heated discussions among ordinary citizens as soon as the newspapers revealed it.

5% coupon interest. In addition, the central bank's coupon discount of 3% real money in five years is 8% of the annual income, which is much higher than the interest on bank deposits, although the principal cannot be recovered. But the interest is not paid for a lifetime.

Everyone knows that this state-owned bank is a big bowl of gold, and there is nothing to say about credit. In the future, these perpetual bonds will not only be able to be bought and sold, but will also be passed on to future generations. In the eyes of ordinary citizens, this is simply the state giving money!

It was not long after the state terminated the notice of the issuance of statutory benefits for the National Day, and such a good news immediately made the citizens of the capital happy. In terms of household income and bank savings, the average net worth of the capital's citizens is the first grade in the country, and there are many up-and-coming tycoons, so it is not a problem at all to buy some permanent bonds.

Although it was only an inconspicuous financial news, a few days later, countless well-worth citizens from all over the local towns and cities flocked to the business halls of the local branches of the state-owned Banco Nacional Ultramarino to ask for the details, leaving the bank staff very busy.

The bond quota of about 7 million yuan has long been booked by the private monopoly bankers behind the scenes, and some European aristocratic diplomats in the diplomatic embassy in Manchester City have also grabbed a small part by using various social connections, and less than 3 million have flowed to ordinary citizens in China and the United States, but it is also the largest single sale of financial bonds to ordinary people in history.

Each state-owned Banco Nacional Ultramarino permanent commercial bond has a face value of 100 yuan, and most interested ordinary national families have subscribed for one or two chapters, while a group of richer tycoons, such as Monty, the president of the Manchester City Inland Waterway Transport Company, have subscribed an average of tens of thousands of yuan.

Among the crossing groups, there are also many people who subscribe in their personal names, among which Vice Admiral Sun Yang, chief of the general staff of the Navy, bought 100,000 yuan.

Sun Yang is no more professional than those professional industrial and commercial enterprise capitalists, who have been investing through various channels and expanding their family industry over the years. But no matter how you toss it, there are only a few wholly-owned family industries that you can really own, and the scale is average. Not to mention a number of illegitimate children who dare not lead into the door, even the several sons and daughters born to the genuine wife Yan Xianping may not be enough in the future.

In addition to the two mixed-race twin sisters who had to be openly brought into the house because of the death of their biological mother, Sun Yang also had five illegitimate children who were kept secret. To this end, Sun Yang divided the purchased perpetual bonds into five equal parts, each of which amounted to 20,000 yuan, and then gave them to his five illegitimate children who were abroad.

In this way, even if the illegitimate children are not able to receive the family's recognition and financial support in the future, they can still get an income guarantee of $1,600 a year. Such figures, even in Manchester City, the most economically developed country, are more than three times the annual household income of ordinary citizens.

Sun Yang is not sure how much the national currency will depreciate in a hundred years, but at least in the next fifty years, his illegitimate children and their descendants will be able to live a prosperous and stable life if they are useless. (To be continued......)