On August 27, 20 days before September coal futures, the frantically rising price of coal became the last straw that could crush the remaining sanity of all traders.

At 10 a.m. on August 27, the price of September coal futures had risen to an unbelievable 240p per pound, equivalent to one pound of gold pounds and one pound of coal. On the same day, the spot rose to 200 pence a pound.

This is no longer a matter of "expensive", but outrageous. There may be many outrageous things in human history, and the price of a pound of coal has skyrocketed to one gold pound, which can definitely be ranked in the top 10 of the "list of all outrageous things that have happened" in human history.

The people who work and live in Oilon are paid no change, and they earn only enough to buy a pound of coal for a month. Such a magical reality instantly had very serious consequences.

In response to the shutdown of excavation machines caused by the shutdown of the Russell gear plant, various mines have stepped up their efforts to recruit miners. But...... The miners are not stupid, and their efforts are completely disproportionate to the income of their labor.

The mine did not have any employment contracts with the miners, and there was no relationship between "paying them weekly wages to hire each other". In the Empire, all coal miners were paid for the time they spent digging in the mines. For an hour of work in the mines, miners were paid 5pence.

As for those who work in the mines for a fixed salary, they are technicians who operate machines to dig coal – they are not the same kind as miners.

At current coal prices, miners are paid only one pound of coal after 40 hours of work and digging up about 2,000 pounds of coal.

In the face of such outrageous prices and meager incomes, fools would choose to use their own salaries to buy coal. In order to give their families at least the ability to make a fire and cook, the miners began to steal the excavated coal mines. Since the mine was not designed to prevent miners from being entrained, the major coal mines suddenly suffered "huge losses".

In fact, the weight of the coal mine that a miner can carry is very limited, and after the "theft" of the coal mine, the miners will even choose to shorten their working hours in order to return these "high-value" minerals to their homes as soon as possible. It didn't matter if they had five pence an hour, they had enough coal to take with them, and they would quickly ascend the shaft and go home.

The mine did not even dare to refuse the miners' request to quickly ascend the shaft and go home. They had no reasonable excuse to stop the miners from moving, and they feared that if they refused to ascend the shaft, the enraged miners would follow the example of the Russell gear factory and strike.

Yes, the mine is very worried about the strike. The reason is also related to the fact that the price of September coal futures is so high that they have not enough coal reserves to pay for their existing coal futures orders.

In fact, the original mine's production capacity and reserves were very sufficient. At the beginning of July, it could even be said that each of the operators of these mines had a headache about how to sell their coal stocks. In order to determine the expected level of coal demand in a period of time, each mine has adopted a very common method of selling coal from inventory to futures - 80% of the existing coal reserves are included in the futures coal mining trading pool available for trading.

According to the mine's initial predictions, it would not matter if all the coal was bought by futures traders – 20% of the coal stock was more than enough to meet the market demand, and the mechanics who used the machines to mine the coal were not working at all right now. July to September is the maintenance period for traditional coal mining machines, and each mine is overhauling mining equipment that has been in use for about a year.

If there is a sudden increase in demand, the technicians simply complete the overhaul quickly and the machine can be back to work.

Therefore, the total amount of September coal futures sold by various mines through the Imperial City Exchange is quite large. The total amount they sell is 80 percent of their monthly production plus 80 percent of their existing coal stocks, for a total of about 600 million pounds.

In other words, at 16 pence per pound, the total supply of coal for Olin in September would be worth about 40 million gold pounds. Now, the Oilon Development Bank has spent 23 million gold pounds on the purchase of September coal futures totaling about 460 million pounds.

Seventy-six percent of Oilon's September coal supply is concentrated in the hands of Oilon Development Bank. By virtue of the price advantage of the early purchase, after pledging these futures bills at 50% of the current price, the funds in the hands of Olin Development Bank not only did not decrease, but increased by 46 million gold pounds.

With these amounts as a backup, there is no problem at all in dealing with the withdrawal of deposits by ordinary customers - the banks that take deposits from the public are feeling the enormous pressure in this time of soaring prices. As long as a branch has all the cash taken out by the customer and can no longer redeem the funds to other customers, the news that "a certain bank is about to close down due to the huge losses suffered by the coal mine" will be circulated in the market. Later, large customers who had kept their money in the bank will suddenly ask for withdrawal.

In order to cope with the withdrawal needs of the public, which are only a few hundred thousand gold pounds, these banks have to keep more than 200,000 gold pounds in cash reserves in each branch, and then find ways to replenish their liquidity through various means, ready to meet the withdrawal needs of their customers.

The funds that they had previously lent to Olin Development Bank at low interest rates for "replenishing liquidity" were naturally re-borrowed by them - borrowed rather than withdrawn early, after all, it is better to pay interest than to pay a large amount of liquidated damages.

In order to cope with these possible withdrawals, the other Oilon banks are almost exclusively on the defensive. And on the stock exchange, there is not a single trader who is a rival to Oilon Development Bank. Fueled by a large amount of money, no individual or organization seems to be able to compete with the Olin Development Bank - the price of coal futures in September has completely lost the possibility of market pricing, and if Lorraine wants to, the price of coal futures in September can rise to 500 gold pounds per pound.

However, it is impossible to achieve Dussand's strategic goal of "slowing down the development of the empire through economic warfare" by simply raising the price of futures. At least simply raising the price of energy will not be enough – the prices of other products will need to be raised as well, and to the point that it will cause civil unrest in the empire.

Dussander himself does not have much detailed knowledge and research on the impact of energy prices on the country's economy, but one thing is certain - when he watched the news in his last life, he heard more than once that some countries have experienced civil unrest and economic recession due to severe inflation due to sharp increases in energy prices.

There are dates and no dates, in order to buy time for Newsar to develop, Dussander is now doing everything. Fortunately, as part of the general war, the empire was almost unprepared for economic warfare. Even Archduke Hall, who was supposed to be the gatekeeper of the empire's economy, did not respond effectively.

Of course, Scholz also has the credit for this.

As a talent "employed" and "protected" by Archduke Hall, Schultz and Archduke Hall actually had a very close relationship. He would be chosen by Grand Duke Hall as the person to carry out the plan of El Salvador, naturally because he had the trust of Grand Duke Hall.

And after the implementation of the Salvadoran plan, it became clear to anyone with political acumen that Schultz no longer had irreplaceable value for Archduke Hall. So, if Schultz wants to continue to be protected by Archduke Hall, and survive in this seemingly prosperous and stable, but in fact undercurrent is surging...... Then he must immediately struggle to create new value for himself.

The Olin Development Bank is clearly the result of Schultz's struggle.

As the most trusted subordinate and close friend of the deceased Marquis Neusal Lafayette, it is not surprising that Schultz was able to control a considerable part of the Marquis's hidden funds in Olin. Grand Duke Hall not only did not feel inappropriate about Schultz's use of such "weird" means to obtain a large amount of profits, but even praised Schultz for being indeed a talent.

Sure enough, on August 28, Schultz went to visit the Grand Duke's residence. After discharging the first amount of money raised by the Olin Development Bank - 10 million gold pounds to the bus, Schultz also made a very frank promise that in order to make the empire stronger, he would give half of the proceeds of the Olin Development Bank to the Archduke Hall "for your emergency use to ensure the health of the empire's finances".

After giving such a generous "contribution", Archduke Hall smiled and invited Schultz to taste the refreshments in the mansion, and then invited him to lunch with him. And the price of this lunch is that tomorrow morning the Orin Development Bank will have to prepare a sum of five million gold pounds for the Archduke Hall—all in cash.

At lunch, Archduke Hall naturally asked Schultz about the ultimate goal of the Olin Development Bank and "how far do you plan to go?"

"There is still a lot of room for improvement in the Empire's finances...... Therefore, I think that the lowly poor ghosts, who only know how to take advantage of the public services provided by the Empire's funds, should make some contribution to the economic development of the Empire. Schultz's answer is very much in line with his current personality, "Since they don't want to increase consumption, why don't they raise prices and make them pay more taxes?" ”

"You have no doubts about the loyalty of the Empire." For this kind of obvious lake trick words, Grand Duke Hall did not care. He asked again, "What I want to know more is, how much money do you want to make from this future?" ”

"Our goal is 100 million gold pounds." Schultz smiled slightly, and said a jaw-dropping figure in a non-worthless tone, "Those banks have handed over forty-six million, and they have no more oil and water to squeeze." Other traders, especially those who are still holding on to shorts...... They can squeeze at least another 20 million gold pounds out of them. ”

"Mines that are not related to the mining consortium are oversold so badly that they can't deliver enough spot coal after the delivery period, and they have to pay 10 times the spot market price in cash. With a little negotiation, thirty million gold pounds can be almost worth it - those who try to bargain with His Majesty should be beaten up. Schultz's smile was very confident, and he continued, "In the next step, we are going to make the greedy smelters who have taken a large number of orders but cannot deliver them at all suffer a dumb loss, which is almost another 30 million gold pounds." ”

"The mining complex has been too strong lately, and the Forestry Department needs some assistance." Grand Duke Hall smiled and ate a piece of fine veal and said, "You know what to do, right?" ”

"It's ...... to do it to the mining complex," Schultz looked embarrassed, "I may need your help." ”

"You'll get my help." Grand Duke Hall nodded, "As Your Majesty said - those who are loyal to the Empire will be rewarded. ”