Vienna, Austria.

In the capital of the empire, a financial storm was brewing. Since the introduction of the long-term plan for the second phase of the Imperial Railway, the stock price of some sections of the project has been rising.

It soon went from 5 florins to 15 florins. This pattern of stock issuance and stock price growth are not normal.

Too fast and too much hype was expected in the eyes of experts, so when the issue price exceeded 120%, Adjani and her subordinates began to suppress the stock price.

Of course, the specific operation must have been discussed by specialized traders and economists, but the experts hired by Franz soon discovered a problem, that is, they could not suppress the trend of stock price rise; So it's easy to cross the 120% red line, and it's only a matter of time before the 200% is crossed.

Unlike in the past, this time the stock rise was not led by a few bankers or a few families, but a national co-investment.

Experts felt that since they could not stop the overheating this time, it was better to choose to sell at the high point and buy back at the low point, following the example of Archduke Franz.

Theoretically, there is no problem with this, anyway, the royal family is not the party that suffers, after all, the capital market is characterized by the strong and the strong; Even with its ability to take risks, the royal family, which has a lot of capital in its hands, is far stronger than other speculators.

Almost all of the experts assured Adjani that it would be a sure deal, but she was still a little worried, and her instincts told her that it was going to be a crisis.

In a conference room on the third floor of the Caesars Hotel, Solomon Rothschild watched intently as his favorite junior boasted that the financial turmoil that would sweep through Central Europe was the work of a young man under the age of twenty.

"Please rest assured that this time we and the royal families and nobles of various countries will be out of the way. From now on, Central Europe will be the world of our Jews, and the princes and generals will only become more and more dependent on us, and they will be nothing without us...

We can rely on our ingenuity to conquer Europe, there is simply no need to travel thousands of miles to the Middle East to fight the damned Ottomans for that pitiful desert! ”

(On February 5, 1840, Eid al-Adha, several Ottoman orders carried out a mass murder of Jewish immigrants near Jerusalem, resulting in tens of thousands of casualties.) ）

At the same time, in another place, a young man dressed in Arabic attire was talking to the audience in front of him; In the audience sat a group of financial giants from Austria, Germany, and Italy, and of course they all had another common feature – they all had usury in business.

The advent of installments, a financial innovation introduced by Franz and his economists, dealt a major blow to the loan shark industry in Central Europe.

This epoch-making measure solved the urgent needs of many people, and brought positive energy to the empire's economy, allowing it to continue to develop along a healthy track, while also allowing different classes to see a glimmer of light and hope.

The number of people who choose to take risks and drink to quench their thirst has greatly decreased, and most of them have chosen a predictable tomorrow.

Although the empire still did not legislate at this time to set a limit on the illegal loan shark, the effect of "one to ten, ten to hundred" made more ordinary people begin to understand that it is an unreasonable financial product.

After all, the royal family's annual interest rate of no more than 5% in installments is there, and who would choose a loan shark with an annual interest rate of more than 40% or even 50%?

Even Rothschild, a "conscience" usury merchant who is good at public relations and packaging, and several other large families usually set interest rates above 25%.

The advent of the new financial model of installment payment is a weapon against these greedy financiers, and it immediately beats these loan sharks to the ground, and their business volume and profits are falling off a cliff.

Although they have the backing of the forces behind them, who dares to act as heroes in front of the royal family? What is ridiculous is that their worship of the bureaucrats and the evil forces cannot be broken in the slightest.

In this way, the phenomenon of usury merchants selling their sons and daughters, and even committing suicide by throwing themselves into the river, occurred frequently.

Although some people who are not very long-sighted try to put pressure on the royal family and the government to comply, by spending large sums of money and buying headlines in newspapers, etc., to justify and benefit from usury.

However, Franz's offensive has always been able to refute the incompleteness of those so-called financial experts, and even directly characterize them as calamities to the country and the people from the moral high ground.

The arguments in favor of the loan shark side are none other than the following.

First, to borrow and distort Hegel's "being is reason" to defend itself.

The Old Testament of the Bible describes usury as saying, "If you lend money to a poor man of my people who is with you, do not take interest from him as a moneylender." ”

Second, link usury to charity.

From the bank or the instalment provided by the royal family, which requires personal property or predictable income as a guarantee, the argument that no one will lend money to the poor, to show his image of "thinking of the poor".

On the other hand, it is cleverly pointed out that those who really need money do not necessarily have and meet the conditions set by the royal family; That's why everybody hates usury, but they need it.

Thirdly, it is neither the usurer who offers the usury nor the one who cannot afford to pay it back; It is because those stupid people do not understand the internal laws of the economy and misestimate their ability to repay the money.

And those "good" loan sharks should not be punished, because they only did bad things with "good intentions".

Fourth, borrowing usury can enhance people's creativity and promote healthy social and economic development. The large amount of interest it generates will give the group who owe money a good opportunity to make the most money on their own, helping those who are lazy to push their limits.

Merchants who also received a large amount of income had their pockets bulging and would take the initiative to buy more products, which would also stimulate consumption and promote the development of the commodity economy. This is the most market-oriented approach and should be celebrated, not belittled.

Fifth, optimize the allocation of resources and let the funds go where they should go.

The poor only know how to eat and drink, and they don't know anything about making money, and the concentration of a large amount of capital in the hands of the bankers means a greater number of factories, major public works and the construction of railways, which is beneficial to the country and harmless.

And those who don't have money can continue to stimulate economic development as a demographic dividend.

Sixth, great powers such as Britain and France have very advanced financial and banking industries, so they can be ranked among the world's great powers.

The pen hired by the other party wrote about dozens of "benefits" freely, but the core is three points, first, existence is reasonable, second, in line with economic laws, and third, the quality of people who can't afford money is not good (lazy, stupid, uninformed, the pattern is too small)

The argument against these people is also very simple, which is to give 1 million florins as a bonus.

Any financier who could spend a year in any factory or dock in London, Liverpool, Manchester, and earn £50 could take the million.

Of course, you can also take out the corresponding collateral and then invest, as long as the money earned after 3 years can repay the interest plus principal, you can get this bonus.

The result, of course, was zero success.

Of the 32 financial experts who chose to try their luck, 15 quit within a week, the remaining 17 10 within a month, six of the remaining seven died in factories and one went to a mental hospital.

The number of casualties was completely expected by Franz, after all, with the safety situation and work intensity of the British factory at that time, it was abnormal to have a few deaths.

Five very wealthy financiers chose the second way to prove themselves, and two of them lost their principal in the first year of investment and had to sell their mortgaged property.

Another expert directly enjoyed the generous package treatment of the Vienna version of the "Bingku Grand Hotel" because of cheating.

The remaining two borrowed loan sharks because they wanted to turn over, and finally had to go to the "rooftop".

Personally, I think that Lan Fang writes well, and the plot design is exquisite, but now it has no beginning or end, which makes me uncomfortable to watch.

Next, the protagonist will return to Europe, and on the way, he will write about how the protagonist sailed over, so as not to be said to be time-traveling.

But I guess this is the time, after all, I'm writing a historical text, not a travel journal, or a diary.

I'm now shaken about my original intention of writing the book, which I've designed six main stories so far, but in the end I had to cut five of them.

The only thing that was written was the much-maligned Turkish-Egyptian war.

I don't like to complain very much, but the huge amount of negative energy makes me very gloomy, making me say a lot of irrational things and do a lot of meaningless things.

After today's update, there is a high probability that tomorrow will choose to take a day off.

That's it, I wish you all good luck and good luck, and you will always smile

(End of chapter)