Hearing this, Scrooge frowned. Indeed, in the process of establishing the Federal Reserve, a lot was contributed. However, he also paid off by being re-elected president and, once retired, he was invited by many foundations to be their senior advisor. And he will continue to be invited by various institutions to give speeches, to write memoirs, in short, to send him money, and at the same time to make him an important link between the consortium and the Republican Party. And his children and nephews also have the opportunity to enter those big conglomerates as executives.

This set of tricks originally took decades to fully mature, but because of the emergence of Scrooge, it matured ahead of schedule. This mechanism does give those who are willing to cede their power a legitimate opportunity to sell their power for a good price, but, in a sense, it also limits the upper limit of what those politicians can achieve economically. That is, those political figures, at most, can only be senior white-collar workers, who can get very high salaries, but they will not get the power to really control a consortium. And now, President William McKinley seems to be not satisfied with this status of "working emperor", and he seems to want to go further than being president.

"Did Morgan react?" Scrooge asked.

"Not yet, maybe they want to see how we react." Dorothea said.

"They should be more anxious than we are about this. So let's not panic and see what Morgan does first. Scrooge said.

Scrooge makes sense because the Morgan consortium is more focused on finance than the McDonald consortium, so they should be less tolerant of such changes than the McDonald consortium. So if there is any action, Morgan's side should also make a move first.

As a result, this matter was temporarily shelved with Scrooge's words.

The Morgan consortium did react, but their reaction did not seem to be as drastic as Scrooge expected, and there was no "bang" two shots to solve the problem. Morgan and his team adopted a more civilized approach, using interbank business to quickly inflate the stock price of the target that the president's bank wanted to acquire, so that the acquirer had to abandon the plan for the time being.

"Morgan must have been planning something, or he wouldn't be so gentle, so passive. I just don't know what he's planning. After learning the outcome of this matter, Scrooge commented.

……

In order to find out what Morgan was planning, Scrooge of course let his people keep an eye on Morgan. Soon, Scrooge came up with a possible answer, and that was that Morgan was now looking more outside the United States.

"Morgan is eyeing the Manchu reparations business? It's a big deal indeed. And to succeed, there are many places where the president's support is needed. No wonder he did so gently this time, and although he repelled our Mr. President's acquisition plan, it did not cause him much loss. ”

In recent times, Scrooge and the entire MacDonald family have focused on the Boer War. This also caused them to ignore a big event on the other side of the world - the Boxer Rebellion in China.

Just as colonizing any other region, in China, European colonization is inseparable from religion. In fact, the history of Christianity's global expansion was almost synchronized with the Great Voyage and Great Colonization. In China, of course, it is no exception. So with the raven in 1840. With the help of the guns of the war, Christianity in China has developed rapidly.

But the conflict between the teachings of Christianity itself and traditional Chinese culture is very large. For example, if you really believe this, you have to believe that your father, your grandfather, (if they are not Christians) will die and go to hell. Oh no, this statement is incorrect, it should be stated that they all deserve to go to hell when they die, and who made them all heathens who deserve to go to hell? What the? You say they've been kind all their lives and haven't done anything bad? Not believing in Jesus Christ is the worst thing to do, much worse than murder and arson, or even genocide! Also, they worshipped the Bodhisattva, right? Have you worshiped the Dragon King, worshiped the City God, and worshiped the Taishang Laojun? That is the grave sin of idolatry, devil worship! Yes, strictly according to the teachings of Christianity, all the gods and goddesses except Christianity are evil spirits, and those who believe in them are all cultists. Even today, this doctrine has never been compromised, except that it is not mentioned actively for the sake of social circumstances, but if a pastor is honest enough, he will also tell you: "Guanyin is the most obscene evil spirit." (4V said by a Christian pastor.) ）

Therefore, when this religion was first introduced to China, it was not very popular. In the Ming Dynasty and the early Qing Dynasty, they even needed to be packaged in the natural sciences that they were most opposed to in order to barely spread them in a small area. After 1840, they were supported by violence, so naturally there were better means of communication. That is to let those ignorant Chinese see the tangible benefits of believing in Christ.

This tangible benefit often started with a free "sacrament" to eat, and soon developed to the point that as long as you believe in religion and become a "parishioner", you can get the protection of the church. Because the foreigners have won all battles against "my Qing Dynasty", our Qing Dynasty has basically not been afraid of foreigners from top to bottom, from the Empress Dowager Cixi to the bureaucrats at all levels. Therefore, once there is a dispute between Chinese and foreigners, most of the time, they will always favor and condone foreigners. Therefore, the shelter of the "foreign church" was definitely very useful in China at that time, and with this shelter, there were many benefits.

Generally speaking, people who are willing to admit that their fathers and grandfathers, as well as one of their ancestors, deserve to go to hell for the sake of these benefits, and their character is naturally not much better. With the support of foreigners, these people naturally do whatever they want, and they are absolutely unscrupulous when they do bad things. Anyway, something really happened, and there were foreigners to support it. The government is afraid of foreigners. And for the church, the benefits of adopting such a strategy are also obvious, that is, the number of believers who want to get such benefits continues to join in, and the number of believers expands rapidly. This, of course, led to a surge of contradictions between the "parishioners" and the common people, the gentry, and the local grassroots government. Eventually, the Boxer Rebellion against Christianity took place.

At the same time, the Empress Dowager Cixi, the supreme ruler of the Qing Dynasty, has been unhappy with foreigners for many years. Since the Wuxu coup d'état and put Guangxu, the second middle and second goods, under house arrest, those damned foreigners have jumped out from time to time to demand that the Empress Dowager Cixi release Guangxu, demand that the Empress Dowager Cixi return to power, and ask the Empress Dowager Cixi to ...... What the hell does this have to do with those foreigners! Moreover, it is said that some imperialist elements in exile also kept eyebrowning with foreigners and made a lot of promises to them (anyway, the Qing Dynasty is not theirs now, so they don't care). Some damned foreigners were moved by what they said and were ready to unite and help the Qing Dynasty restore order. So the Empress Dowager Cixi joined forces with the Boxer brothers who were said to be invulnerable to the gods and declared war on almost the whole world. And began to besiege the embassies of various countries.

It's just that the combat effectiveness of my Daqing is really bad enough, even if you add those invulnerable brothers, the approximate value can't exceed 5, and the siege of the embassy with only a few hundred people can't be defeated, and finally, in the face of the temporarily organized Eight-Nation Alliance, I was defeated crisply, and then naturally it was the old routine of cutting land and paying compensation.

According to the treaty, our Qing Dynasty needs to pay 450 million taels of silver to other countries. This figure is really not too big a figure for the industrial countries of Europe and the United States. During the Franco-Prussian War, the French paid the Germans 5 billion francs in one go, which was converted into gold, which amounted to 1,450 tons. At that time, it was equivalent to more than 800 million taels of silver, and if the price was calculated around 1900 (the price of silver relative to gold at this time fell a lot. ), which is equivalent to 1360 million taels of silver. And the French gritted their teeth and paid it off in three years. However, although our Qing Dynasty is rich and rich, it is a backward and poor agricultural country after all, and such a sum of money cannot be taken casually. The only way to do this is to borrow money from foreign banks, borrow new debts, and pay off old debts. So I went on like this, and I didn't pay it back until I finished clearing the eggs. It also affected our honest and trustworthy Republic of China, and it was still this until World War II.

Since it involves borrowing money or something, of course, financial things are inevitable. The loan involved in Gengzi's indemnity is a big deal, so it is very normal for Morgan to focus on this.

"Our Mr. President is in good luck. It would be better if he knew to be a little more restrained in the future. After learning the specifics, Scrooge said.

"It's hard to say," Dorothea continued, "that perhaps people will inflate themselves and take this attack as a provocation." Besides, Scrooge, do you remember that joke you told us? ”

"Which joke?" Scrooge asked, raising an eyebrow.

"It's the one who, in public, took somebody's gold, got caught, and said to the judge, 'When I see gold in my eyes, I can't see anyone around me.'" Dorothea moved around the couch to make herself more comfortable, "In fact, most people, when they see gold, forget about the ...... that someone is staring at next to them."