When the imperial examinations began in the second year of Zhenguan, the imperial court also officially ordered the establishment of branch offices in various Dao.
Under the Zhidu Division, there are four Cao Cao: Zhidu Cao, Yuan Cao, Yantie Cao, and Changping Cao.
Each branch office has one envoy, two deputy envoys, one judge, and several other officials including the chief clerk, who records affairs and joins the army, who records affairs, and the four cao who joins the army and joins the military.
The ten branch divisions are always led by the Judgment branch.
This newly established agency has great power. The Transshipment Cao is in charge of water and land transportation and the national grain and cargo transportation, the cashier, the Salt and Iron Cao is in charge of the salt, iron, tea and wine monopoly, as well as mining and metallurgy, and coinage. The Changping Cao is in charge of the Changping Warehouses in various places.
Management, goods and purchasing, foreign trade, Zhidu Cao is responsible for auditing money and grain revenue and expenditure, formulating budgets, etc.
The emperor also gave the envoys and deputy envoys of each Taoist branch a secret duty to visit the officials of their respective Taoists and understand the public and private matters. He also gave them certain supervisory powers and could report secretly to the emperor directly without going through the central government.
This is an organization that holds the power of financial auditing and is also responsible for making money.
The main channels for making money are foreign trade, buying goods from Hu merchants, buying and selling market goods, mining, minting money, and monopolizing salt tea and partial wine.
In the plan, a Changping cooperative will also be established to raise a sum of funds to lend food and money to the people. However, the difference from the original public money lending is that the money of this Changping cooperative does not have to be released every year.
, and there is no high interest rate with 100% profit.
"Your Majesty, Changping Loan can also be called Green Crop Loan. It is mainly to help farmers alleviate temporary difficulties. It adopts the method of two loans and two harvests a year. One loan is loaned at the end of the first month and repaid after the summer harvest. The other loan is released at the end of May and then returned after the autumn harvest.
.”
"Where's the interest?"
At the financial meeting in the palace, Li Shimin was still looking forward to Wu Huaiyu's reforms.
"In the past, public money was lent, with a capital of 50,000 yuan, and a monthly interest of 4,000. The monthly profit was eight cents, and the interest rate was twice as much on an annual basis. The interest rate on public money loans was too high. There were many complaints from common people and merchants. In the past, most of them relied on force.
rationing.
Today, our Changping Loan is also called Qingmiao Loan. This is a policy to assist farmers. It is not mainly for making money, but when we help the people, we can also get some profits, so that we can have a long-term virtuous cycle and become a living water that will not dry up.
Therefore, I believe that Qingmiao Loans are only charged two cents of interest every six months, and the actual annual interest rate is only four cents."
Compared with the current monthly interest rate of public money lending, the two-cent interest rate for this half-year is less than half, which is indeed much lower.
Many people are poor, especially after some natural disasters or diseases. They may not even have seeds, and there may be no surplus grain to wait for the next harvest. In this case, in the past, they could only borrow usury.
Paying back three, or ten-ten-cent annual interest on public money, or returning home thirteen times after nine outings, lamb loans, etc., are all very heavy burdens, and even drinking poison to quench thirst.
Now the imperial court has allocated a sum of capital, so that grain can be received at a fair price in places with good harvests, and transported and stored in Changping warehouses in various places. This grain can be sold when the price of grain rises, or part of it can be used as capital.
Lending to farmers at two-cent interest rates to alleviate the exploitation of private loan sharks.
"You can directly borrow grain to tide over the famine, or you can convert it into money and lend it to help people buy seeds, farm tools, livestock, etc."
"If there is any surplus left after the Changping Cooperative distributes young crops and loans them to the people, it can be loaned to handicraftsmen in cities and towns."
Fang Xuanling directly raised the question, "This Changping loan has only a half-year interest of two cents, but now the loans on the market generally have an annual interest rate of eight cents or even more than ten cents, and there are even loans that come back nine times a year, and one loan will be repaid three cents."
How to ensure that this precious capital of the imperial court will not be arbitraged by unscrupulous businessmen?"
this is a problem.
If someone colludes with the government and businessmen to lend the capital of the imperial court at two cents interest for half a year, and then lend it out at four cents, five cents or even six cents half a year, wouldn't it be a waste of money and a waste of money?
It is not unusual for this kind of thing to be left to future generations. There are some low-interest or even interest-free loans under policies that benefit the people. The result is that those who are truly qualified do not know about it or cannot get it. Instead, some people use their identities to borrow money or provide loans to those who are qualified.
Qualified people, with a little money, can use their identity to get interest-free or low-interest loans, which is much cheaper than normal loans.
“First of all, the qualifications of borrowers must be limited and the loan amount of each household must be limited. Then five or ten households must form a guarantee, with the upper third-class households as guarantees.
For summer loans, you must apply for a loan before the 30th day of the first lunar month of each year, and for an autumn loan before May 30th. Summer and autumn loans must be repaid in May and October respectively.
Qingmiao Loan is originally based on helping farmers, so it gives priority to lending to farmers. When borrowing, the purpose of the loan must be stated, and it can only be used for personal use and cannot be loaned out. If there is any violation, the ten households that will be guaranteed will also be guaranteed by the third-class households.
Everyone should be held accountable,
The borrowers are rich and poor, and 10 people are guaranteed to check each other. The loan amount is divided into nine levels according to the assets of each household. The first-level households can borrow nine guan at a time, and the bottom-level households can borrow 1 guan. They can borrow cash or grain, and they can repay whatever they borrow.
What."
After Fang Xuanling and the other prime ministers heard this, they all nodded involuntarily.
"These measures are good. They can help the people and help production during the lean period. They can also inhibit private mergers and crack down on private loan sharking."
Wei Zheng was not so polite. He asked Wu Huaiyu, "In the past, the imperial court used public money to lend money, and its original intention was to help the people's needs. But in fact, everyone knows that there are many problems in lending public money today. Some money-grabbing officials have raised interest rates at will."
There are some who force people to borrow money, and there are also people who use private money as official capital to lend money, and there are even subordinate officials who use this method to extort money under various names. The people are miserable. How can Duke Yi guarantee that Changping Loan will not become a loan?
Public money lending second?"
"What Wei Xianggong said is not impossible, but when we first formulated Chang Ping Dai, its policy was good. If an official takes the opportunity to commit illegal acts, or even takes bribes and perverts the law, it is not the problem of Chang Ping Dai itself, but the official's.
Problems, even problems of the supervisory department.”
"The annual interest rate for public money loans is 10 cents, and the half-year interest rate for Changping loans is only 2 cents. The interest rate has dropped by less than half, and it can truly be used by ordinary people. Isn't this good enough?"
Li Shimin high-fived and praised, "Huaiyu is right. There is no problem with the policy. If people have problems, just deal with them. You can't not implement the policy just because officials may be corrupt and profiteering."
Wei Zheng asked again, "Where is the capital?"
"No matter how good the policy is, if there is no capital, how many people can it benefit?"
Wu Huaiyu answered, "This time, the imperial court has collected the capital of the capital and local governments into the branch offices, and dedicated them to the branch offices as capital, which can be used to buy, sell, and buy grain from Changpingcang.
Use part of it as capital for Chang Ping Loan."
"How many can there be?"
Taking the capital as an example, the nominal capital of the public house is more than 30,000 guan. In fact, of course it has been much longer. The capital of the public house of Yushitai is 3,800 guan. In fact, after this clean-up and rectification, Yushitai has made a fortune.
A small fortune, not only the 3,800 guan in the account are now matched, but there are also an additional 2,000 guan, and the royal family has 6,000 guan.
These are all official books, not counting the officials, and the money-grabbing officials are their own private books.
The Yushitai handed over 3,800 guan to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, but there were still more than 1,000 guan left. This money was kept as a small treasury for the Yushitai.
In Yongzhou, where Wu Huaiyu was in charge, the public houses were richer than Yushitai. They cleared out tens of thousands of pigs, mainly because they killed too many pigs. Half of them were handed over directly and half was kept.
There are more than 70 companies in the capital, and the company's money turned over is more than 100,000 yuan, which still leaves a small treasury.
The amount of local government funds is even greater. Today, forty-one governor's offices, 365 prefectures, more than 1,500 counties, and more than 600 unified army prefectures all have public funds, a total of one
More than a million coins.
This is still based on the lowest figure. For example, Lingnan Road is basically ignored, and the total number of public houses is only reported as 80,000 yuan.
This more than one million is the capital accumulated by the capital and local government offices for ten years.
However, there are many things that need to be done with this money now. After collecting this capital, in the future, all levels of government office expenses and official salary will have to be paid by the finance department, so the money must be able to increase in value.
, and the annualized rate must be high, otherwise the capital will become less and less.
These more than one million guan were spread among various stalls. In the end, not many people could go to Changpingcang to buy grain. And not all of the grain in Changpingcang could be loaned, only part of it.
This has to be spread over more than 300 states and more than 1,000 counties, which is not much.
Wei Zheng pointed out that Wu Huaiyu's policy actually benefited not many people.
Another prime minister, Wang Gui, who had been silent until now, finally spoke.
"Yi Guogong said that the Qingmiao loan is guaranteed to ten households in a row, and the rich and the poor are matched. I think there is a problem here. The lower household is in urgent need of a loan, but there is no guarantee of repayment. The upper household does not need to borrow. The starting point of the policy of protecting the upper household and the lower household is good.
, to ensure that the lower household can get a guarantee for borrowing, and thus can get relief, but the upper household does not need to borrow, and does not want to borrow. Doesn’t the matching of rich and poor now become a forced apportionment?
When the lower household is unable to repay, it will naturally affect the upper household. I think the result is that the upper household will become poor, and the lower household will only be deeply in debt. In the end, the capital of the court will become a bad debt."
Li Shimin stroked his beard and said, "What Mr. Wang said makes sense. You can borrow nine guan if you go to the upper house, but you will not be short of the nine guan if you go to the upper house."
"Your Majesty and Mr. Wang are right. This is something I have not considered carefully. I think it can be modified. For example, among the ninth-class households, only loans are given to the fifth-class households in the middle and below, and the loan amount is changed from ten guan to two guan.
Guan, money and food.
As for the guarantee, it does not matter whether the guarantor is rich or poor.
As for whether the money will be repaid, I think Changping Loan itself is to help the people and farmers, so if the people are really in difficulty, the court should take the loan. If the repayment is not due, then you can apply for a deferment of principal repayment, and follow-up
It can be repaid in installments, with a little interest added as appropriate, and there is no need to force collection immediately."
If the old debt is not repaid, the qualification for new loans will be suspended.
Wei Zheng said, "I think using part of Chang Pingcang's grain as capital is still too small and will not have much effect."
"Mr. Wei, the starting point of Qingmiao Loan is good, and the policy is also good. Even if the capital is small now and the benefits to the people are limited, if the capital increases in the future, it will benefit more people. What's more, don't neglect doing good deeds because they are small."
"Moreover, in response to the problem of low capital, I actually have another plan,"
