Chapter 25 You say my hand, why can't it be controlled?
the next day.
"So this thing has depreciated seriously now, and a regular banknote can only be exchanged for two hundred and fifty copper coins?"
Yang Feng said while holding a treasure note with a denomination of five hundred yuan.
Basically all of his requests were met, including the more sensitive iron coupon.
Zhu Yuanzhang posted a lot of that thing...
Anyway, he didn't admit it afterward. All the princes he killed had iron certificates. This thing has been useless since its birth. It's like you and I promised to live together until we grow old together. When we look back, we get tired of aesthetics, that enchanting vixen.
Insert it in the middle, why don't you die, you yellow-faced woman? Zhu Yuanzhang is already kind. Li Cunxu gave it to Zhu Youqian in the first year, and immediately killed the whole family after the New Year. Zhu Youqian's wife directly put the iron coupon at the feet of the general who ransacked his house.
fling……
"Your emperor gave this to our family last year. I, a woman, can't read, so I don't know what's written on it!"
This made the general very embarrassed.
Therefore, those serious people in ancient times generally believed that posting this was to tell you to rebel quickly!
"They gave me iron coupons because they suspected me of rebelling. I never thought about rebelling, but they gave me this. Is this to force me to rebel?"
This was said by someone who was really rebellious.
That's why Zhu Yuanzhang didn't mind giving Yang Feng an iron coupon!
It's just a four-pound iron plate. Just give it to him, but it takes some time to make, so he can't get it today.
The remaining carriages and banknotes are just trivial matters. As Yang Feng said, he printed them all by himself, so what should he care about?
Zhu Yuanzhang directly gave him one hundred ingots. One ingot is fifty guan, which is five thousand guan. The legal value is equal to five thousand taels of silver. But in fact, one tael of silver cannot be exchanged, because only silver can be exchanged for treasure notes, but not
You must exchange your treasure banknotes for silver.
However, the value of the treasure banknotes at this time had indeed depreciated significantly.
"In the eighth year of Hongwu, banknotes were fixed. Banknotes were always worth a thousand coins, one tael of silver, and four coins were worth one tael of gold. Gold and silver were strictly prohibited from private use, and could only be exchanged for treasure banknotes from the court. The people used banknotes in parallel, but in fact the people were more willing to
With money, in addition to the increasing number of old and new treasure banknotes and the mixing of counterfeit banknotes, the actual value is getting cheaper.
At present, although there are differences in various places, the general exchange rate is about 250 Wen.
There are even some remote places that would rather barter for things than use treasure money, and His Majesty has always been worried about this."
Zhang Xianzong said.
At this time, many painters had gathered behind them.
As if worshiping a sacred object, he was drawing a map against Yang Feng's watch, which was enshrined. The latter's light was like holy light.
As Xiaoyu said, drawing a small thing into a big one is just the basic skill of those painters. Although the screen of his watch is pitifully small and the map is only bigger than a copper coin, for these painters
Come on, drawing the outline is really easy...
They are professionals.
So now the outlines of the Ming Dynasty, Indochina Peninsula, India, and the Japanese country that Yang Feng showed them have been quickly drawn.
The addition of rivers and lakes has now begun.
Then we will add mountains, compare the Ming Dynasty mixed map and other information, and add the administrative divisions and place names of the Ming Dynasty.
Zhu Yuanzhang even specifically requested that modern agricultural areas be mapped out.
Anyway, this is a color map, it just paints the agricultural areas in special colors.
I have to say that His Majesty the Emperor does not care about anything else but how much land there is for farming.
Each of these painters works on the same painting, and will finally choose the most accurate one to present to His Majesty the Emperor.
After this part of the drawing is completed, other parts will continue to be drawn. Finally, all the drawn maps will be spliced together to make a complete map of Kunyu and all the kingdoms in the form of a screen. Let Zhu Yuanzhang put it in the palace and watch it every day as he fantasizes about conquering the world.
, although he definitely won’t have this opportunity, after all, he is already over sixty, but the old man is still aiming for a thousand miles!
You can still fantasize about it.
"If you can't play with paper money, just keep making metal currency. Paper money is indeed an advanced idea. We all had paper money at that time, but it's not his way. Banknotes are waste paper. You have to have an anchor to be valuable. Go and put it
He calls over and I give him a good talk about currency."
Yang Feng said.
He sounded like he was the emperor.
"Your Excellency, who do you think the emperor is, that you can come and go as soon as you call him?"
"You can go, whether he likes it or not, I am in a good mood just because I can give him a lecture. Besides, after you go, with your literati mouths, how can you still say something so ugly? You won't beautify it for me and let him
I feel better, although there is really no difference in essence!"
"You'd better tell me first and I'll hear if it makes sense, otherwise I'll rashly report it to Your Majesty. When His Majesty was furious, he killed my whole family.
What is an anchor?”
Zhang Xianzong was not that stupid. He tried to beautify it but it was Yang Feng who summoned Zhu Yuanzhang.
Could his beautification make Zhu Yuanzhang ignore this problem?
Yang Feng is a bachelor with a scar as big as a bowl on his head. Someone like him who has a family and a job doesn't have the guts to play with him in such an exciting way.
"First of all, we should understand that this thing is just a piece of waste paper. It is too hard to wipe your butt in the latrine. Now it can buy things because it represents the imperial power. His Majesty the Emperor wants it to buy things, so the common people have to use it to buy things.
Something. In theory, this approach is actually correct, and it is even very advanced. It is too advanced, because it was not until six hundred years later that this kind of currency became popular. We called it national credit currency. All countries at that time were like this.
Dry.
As for saying it has depreciated, we also have this problem.
And it is no different from the reason for its depreciation. It is just that it is too easy to use and I can't control my desire to print more.
Why can't I control my hand?"
Yang Feng clapped his hands and said as if he was possessed by Zhongtang.
However, in good conscience, the depreciation of treasure banknotes is not serious...
The banknote law was established in the eighth year of Hongwu. Now, seventeen years have passed and the value has depreciated by three-quarters. This is much stronger than the US dollar.
The U.S. dollar decoupled from gold in 1971, and July 1 plus 17 means 1788. After decoupling from gold, the U.S. dollar essentially anchored crude oil. Crude oil in 1971 was less than two U.S. dollars a barrel, and crude oil in 1988 was 20 U.S. dollars a barrel.
A barrel of U.S. dollars depreciates much faster than precious currency notes.
The crows in the world are so dark!
The integrity of the American emperor is actually not as good as Zhu Yuanzhang's.
Zhang Xianzong smiled slightly, obviously acquiescing to this.
"Then what did your Majesty the Emperor do?"
Yang Feng asked.
"Rewards, His Majesty rewards military households with treasures every year. Those who win the conquests are also rewarded with treasures. The civilians who transport military supplies are also rewarded with treasures. When some remote places encounter famines, when they provide rice and grain relief, they will also be rewarded with treasures.
The victims of the disaster were rewarded with treasure notes for their use. In addition, the imperial court purchased and constructed these. The more rewards your Majesty gave, the more buildings were built, and the more treasure notes were released to the people. However, there were not many uses for the treasure notes among the people, and the people
Nor do they collect treasure banknotes as wealth, and they are eager to use whatever they get. Naturally, as the number of treasure banknotes on the market increases day by day, they become less and less valuable."
"So there is no solution to this problem.
Even if he passes temporary reforms to allow banknotes to circulate under his knife, or even bans copper coins altogether, as long as he continues to print banknotes, he will still have to face the problem of increasing banknote stocks and then continuing to depreciate.
This is a natural flaw of this currency.
In fact, it’s not just this kind of currency. This problem exists in any currency. It’s just that metal currency cannot be printed as you want, so it is limited by its natural properties. However, if the amount of this metal suddenly increases, it will also depreciate.
For example, if silver continues to pour in from overseas, with tens of millions of taels flowing in every year, you will see that one stone of rice costs several taels of silver.
It's just that paper money is particularly problematic in this regard.
Because it has no restrictions at all, it depends entirely on the integrity of the ruler, and it is too easy to get. After all, you have everything to start the printing press, so when you encounter trouble, this is the first thing you think of. Now your emperor can still control his ability to print money.
Desire, but future emperors will increasingly rely on this method.
They will print money more uncontrollably, and eventually the precious banknotes will become useless paper.
That's when the real currency collapse occurs.
You'd better hurry up and call your emperor. There are a lot of things about this question that you shouldn't hear. If you listen to it, you'll really be in danger of killing your whole family."
Yang Feng said.
He really couldn't listen to this question.
Because this is related to Zhu Yuanzhang’s fundamental power...
Monetary rights.
Theoretically speaking, what Zhu Yuanzhang did was right. The depreciation of treasure banknotes cannot be blamed on him. This kind of currency naturally has this problem.
This problem exists with any currency.
The problem of silver depreciation in the late Ming Dynasty was also serious.
It only devalued to a quarter in seventeen years. This depreciation rate puts the credit currencies of most modern countries to shame.
The Federal Reserve said you are still too young, the Russian Central Bank laughed and said nothing, and the European Central Bank said it only took 20 years for us to go from eight euros per gram of gold to fifty euros per gram of gold.
But his principle is not wrong, which is the state control of currency. In the feudal era, I was the state, he was Ming, and Ming was him. His currency control was Ming’s currency control, and the collapse of Ming was essentially currency control.
The problem he guarded against was later proven by history to be absolutely necessary. The country really could not lose control of its currency, so he banned copper coins in the later period. The reason for the ban was very simple.
The gentry and merchants in Jiangsu and Zhejiang did not use treasure banknotes, so that in the late Hongwu years, treasure banknotes in Zhejiang devalued to the point where they could be exchanged for 160 copper coins.
The reason is very simple...
They have money.
As the richest area in the Ming Dynasty, it was inevitable that wealth would flow to them. As the ruling center of the Southern Song Dynasty in the past, aristocratic families had already saved a large amount of copper coins and even gold and silver.
So the result of this development...
The results have been well reflected in the history of the Ming Dynasty.
(Thanks to book friend Benjamin Siegelberg for the tip)