Nine times out of ten, life is unsatisfactory, and Roland knows that he can't please everyone, so he acts with a clear conscience.

A reply was sent to Tamara, and soon after, he received another letter from the holy city of Amsan.

Roland opened the envelope and recognized Palatina's handwriting at a glance, and couldn't help but raise his eyebrows, quite surprised.

Palatina's letter is as down-to-earth and generous as her own, and there is no pretension in what she says.

After a brief greeting, Palatine confessed that she had written this letter to Roland mainly because she had been entrusted with it.

Two months ago, Palatina visited the Far East and was deeply impressed by what she had seen. Upon her return to the holy city of Yashan, she wrote a report based on her own memory, describing as best she could the panorama of the various social strata of the Far East, especially the fast-growing transportation construction, the towns with a thriving commodity economy, and the state-owned farms as pilot for agricultural reform.

Palatina's report caught the attention of Crown Prince Frank, who invited her to join the club of the "reformist" community, and gave a speech at the weekend salon, informing the club colleagues about the results of the reforms carried out by the authorities in the Far East over the past three years.

Most of the members of the "Reform Club" in the Holy City of Assan were young aristocrats and intellectuals, and one of the most prominent was John Lauer, a young lecturer at the Business School of the Imperial Central University and a well-known adventurer in the speculation market of the Holy City's securities, as well as a financial adviser to the crown prince.

Palatine found that Mr. John Raul was fascinated by macroeconomic and financial issues, and repeatedly asked her what she thought of the issuance of silver notes in the Far East.

Palatine displayed the souvenirs she had brought back from the Far East—including commemorative silver bills in three denominations—for John Lauer and her colleagues at the salon. Everyone was amazed at this "paper money" as a substitute for real silver coins, and a heated debate ensued about the reliability of paper money.

Palatina did not know much about "money and banking", and could not interject at all in the quarrels of young scholars quoting scriptures, so she could only be a silent observer. She also noticed a hint of disdain on John Lauer's lips, as if he was contemptuous of both sides of the argument, frowning and staring at the Far Eastern banknotes, his eyes flickering, like a gambler at the card table, planning a desperate gamble.

The day after the Salon of the Reformers, Prince Frank again approached Palatine and asked her "whether the imperial authorities could follow the example of the Far East in issuing banknotes."

Palatine was bewildered by this question, and asked Frank in surprise why he didn't ask Fogel Sr. or Alberton Jr. for advice. They were also part of the team that visited the Far East and had a better say on financial issues than she was a layman.

Frank hesitated for a long time before revealing to her that the imperial authorities had invested too much in the colonies of the New World in recent years, and even did not hesitate to wage war to fight for the mining areas, and later calculated that the return on investment was far less than expected, and the cabinet finally alleviated the deficit crisis a little by monopolizing international food prices.

This practice of "tearing down the east wall and making up for the west wall" cannot fundamentally solve the financial dilemma, but only passes the buck to future generations for the immediate crisis, and the accumulated debt interest is like a snowball, which will create an even greater crisis over time, and when fiscal revenues cannot cover the current liabilities, this financial system full of holes will collapse violently......

Even if you don't think about future troubles, it is not so easy to simply issue bonds to save the emergency. Now that the Imperial Central Bank is in vain, hard currencies such as gold and silver are in the hands of the merchant class, and the premise of issuing treasury bonds is that the rich people buy them, and if the capital group refuses to underwrite the treasury bonds, or offers an unacceptably high discount, the bonds will be like waste paper, and it will be too hard to wipe the buttocks.

Frank told Palatina that the financial and industrial capital groups in the empire had united, led by the Fogel and Weinstein families, and offered the royal family and the cabinet two conditions for underwriting the national debt:

First, to restructure the Reich's central bank and allow private institutions to hold shares and participate in operations;

Second, the governor of the central bank is elected by the board of directors, and the chief justice is followed by a lifetime term to ensure that the central bank formulates and implements monetary policy independently and is not interfered with by political factors.

The two conditions boil down to one sentence, which is actually to ask the central bank to "privatize".

Roland put down the letterhead and made himself a cup of tea. Don't be in a hurry to continue looking back, sipping the refreshing Zuoqi green tea, silently thinking about the current predicament of the empire.

If I'm in Frank's position, how do I deal with this looming financial crisis?

How can we save the empire's finances from bankruptcy at the least cost, and break out of the vicious cycle of "issuing new debts to pay off old debts".

A thought suddenly flashed through his mind, and he couldn't help but scare himself when he thought about it afterwards!

In the current situation of the empire, Roland cannot but admit that privatizing the central bank is actually the least bad option. To do so would be to cede the economic lifeline to the capitalist bloc, and state power would be transferred from the royal family, the aristocracy, the landlords, and the clergy to the hands of the bourgeoisie, which would inevitably demand more favorable relations of production for themselves, and the feudal system of combining theocracy and imperial power would be gradually abolished. If, in the meantime, violent conflict can be avoided and social change can be achieved relatively smoothly, the empire will embark on the path of constitutional monarchy and parliamentary politics.

Roland is well aware of the greed and ruthlessness of the big capitalist group, but compared with the feudal aristocracy, the latter can at least represent a more advanced productive force, and the privatized central bank, free from the interference of imperial power and theocracy, may not be able to restore the economic system of this huge empire to health, and accelerate the pace of magical industrialization. Eventually, the Assanian Empire will most likely be transformed into a "Third French Reich" in the Varesian world, and unless you die, life will definitely be better than it is now.

Roland picked up the pen and jot down his thoughts, then hesitated to write them down in his reply to Palatina, and gave up on the idea after a little thought.

As far as his position is concerned, of course, he does not want to see the empire get out of its predicament through moderate reforms, whether it is a feudal autocratic empire or a capitalist empire, as long as the empire is strongly aggressive, once the empire completes the reform and the situation improves, it will inevitably try to regain the lost territory, and the Far Easterners will not want to live a stable life. On the contrary, it is not entirely a good thing that the crisis of the empire continues to worsen, as the saying goes, "the extreme of things must be reversed", and if a country cannot get rid of the threat of bankruptcy for a long time, then there is no other way to save itself than to desperately start a war to transfer the internal crisis, and the Far East is the only lifeline that the empire can grasp in despair.

Please remember that the first domain name of this book is .. Literature Museum mobile version reading website: m.