Chapter 1618 You can be capricious if you have money
Transfer!
People's losses can only be transferred to people, but it is impossible to transfer them to animals. Then the country's losses can only be transferred to other countries. This is a result that is not difficult to imagine.
Cai Jing nodded and said: "If there are no silver coins, copper coins will be the only universal currency. The loss of currency will cause great losses to the country. But if a few silver coins come out, copper coins will become a hot potato. You introduce so many currencies."
, opening the door to trade is to attract other countries to absorb large amounts of copper coins."
"This is the key to this gamble." Li Qi smiled confidently: "Once the copper coins depreciate, the person holding the copper coins will definitely suffer a very big loss. If all fifteen million coins are smashed into his hands,
There will definitely be a lot of people going bankrupt by then, and there are too many copper coins. Driving out good coins based on bad coins will be really detrimental to the issuance of silver coins. Therefore, we can only attract other countries to help us share the balance.
According to the current trend, I estimate that once the door to trade is opened, at least nearly 8 million will be lost within three years. Then the domestic currency will become scarce again. At this time, we will launch a corresponding number of silver coins to allow
When the market reaches saturation, bad money will not drive out good money in the short term.
The reason why Jiaozi expelled copper coins in the first place was because of the proliferation of Jiaozi. If there were very few Jiaozi, two currencies could be used in parallel, and it could also satisfy the transition from a small peasant economy to a market economy."
"Small farmer economy and market economy?" Cai Jing was stunned for a moment.
Li Qi snorted and said: "The small-scale peasant economy is the kind of economy that existed in the previous dynasty, relying on self-sufficiency on cultivated land. The market economy is a way of increasing wealth through commercial means. As people go higher, so does the currency.
Of course, the economy is heading towards a higher level, but there is a transitional stage in between.
For now, there are still many people who have problems with food and clothing. They can only ensure that they do not starve to death, and the value of silver is very high, and ordinary people cannot use it. If you use this silver coin to buy candied haws, they will not have money.
I’ll give it to you, but merchants are very eager for the emergence of silver coins, because after the transaction reaches a certain level, the relatively low-value copper coins become a burden. These are the two major economies that exist in our country. The disparity is huge, and each currency
Only one can be satisfied."
Cai Jing nodded and said: "I understand, silver coins can meet the needs of the rich, while copper coins can meet the needs of the poor."
Li Qi smiled and said: "That's exactly the truth."
Cai Jing asked again: "In this way, low-value copper coins can be used in parallel with high-value silver coins, because the Song Dynasty needs both of these two currencies."
Li Qi shook his head and said: "The Master's words are wrong. When the difference between the stocks of copper coins and silver coins reaches a certain limit, this is feasible, but once it exceeds this limit, bad coins will drive out good coins. That's why I
When there is a large loss of copper coins in our country, silver coins will be introduced. Once there are more copper coins, then in terms of human nature, people will definitely hide silver and use copper. In this way, there will be more and more copper coins on the market, and silver coins will
There will be less and less. The value of copper coins will also become lower and lower. In the end, copper coins will end up like iron coins."
Qin Hui said: "In this case, there will still be a currency crisis, so what should we do with the copper coins?"
Li Qi smiled and said: "The people will naturally teach us how to do it then?"
"People?"
Qin Hui was stunned.
Li Qidao: "In fact, the principle is the same as iron coins. The imperial court adopted the recycling method, putting silver coins into the market and recycling copper coins. Don't forget the fact that copper itself has value. Once the copper coins depreciate and exceed the value of the copper itself,
Then there will be purchasers, and the court can take advantage of the low price to purchase it and remelt the copper into bronze wares. This is actually not difficult."
Cai Jingdao: "But what can you do to prevent the influx of foreign copper coins into our Song Dynasty?"
"This situation will never happen. Their country is short of copper. Once the copper currency depreciates, their own country will come out to purchase it. Of course, they will also retain a certain amount of currency to meet the domestic market demand, but they can help us share it equally.
This part of the loss is because they use our country’s currency. Once the copper coin depreciates, they will lose a lot of wealth invisibly, and a crisis is likely to break out. There will only be two situations. One is that they
To endure it silently is to start a war and transfer domestic pressure to foreign countries."
Having said this, Li Qi smiled softly and said: "Actually, the reason is very simple. We sell copper with currency properties to surrounding countries at a high price. If there are no silver coins, this transaction will undoubtedly be a loss. But because
With silver coins, we know in advance that the value of copper coins will definitely drop significantly in a certain period, so this is a hugely profitable business. At that time, the wealth of the country that owns copper coins will decrease sharply, maybe even overnight.
, the decrease in wealth heralds the decline of national power, but the national power of our Song Dynasty has soared. At that time, those countries can only wait for us to conquer them. This is the advantage of being able to control the currency market. Why do I say that currency is the first of our Song Dynasty?
A sharp weapon, that’s why.”
This is simply a robber. This is not a person or a country, but several countries. This kind of weakening ability is really shocking. Cai Jing, who has played with currencies all his life, never imagined that currencies would have
Such great power.
However, Cai Jing still had some concerns in his mind and said: "But copper can be used to cast weapons. A large part of the reason why they buy our currency is because of weapons. We must be careful about this."
He added tin to the iron money in the first place just to prevent this.
Li Qi laughed and said: "The Grand Master is overly worried. First of all, the original situation was that the iron coins were not valuable, so using them as weapons would make a lot of money. But the problem is that now the copper coins have exceeded the value of copper. They
If we use it to make weapons, it will definitely be a loss. Secondly, we still retain part of the copper for military use, plus the newly mined copper coins, and the depreciated copper coins that are recycled, which is enough to meet military needs. In the end, even if they use it to build
Weapons, haha, three years from now, our Song Dynasty may have entered the age of firearms. Most of the weapons may be long-range shooting. They still have big knives. Isn’t this asking for abuse? I hope they use these coppers to build them.
With spears and broadswords, when our firearms completely dominate the battlefield, they will just look at the scrap metal and cry."
Zhao Kai heard this and made a puff sound, then shook his head and said: "You continue talking."
Qin Hui glanced at Zhao Kai strangely and said, "One more thing."
Finally thought of this, I thought you had regressed. Li Qi glanced at him and said with a smile: "Qin Shaozai wants to say that introducing silver coins will harm the emperor's interests."
Zhao Kai opened his eyes slightly, with a trace of worry floating between his eyebrows.
Copper has been of great significance to China for five thousand years. The Chinese people have always regarded copper as an auspicious thing, and the rulers also protect the status of copper very much, because there are many copper mines in China. If copper is used as currency,
If so, then the ruler would be sitting on a lot of wealth. This is why copper coins have dominated China for more than two thousand years. However, the value of copper coins has always been too low. They only represent a small-scale peasant economy and cannot meet the needs of a market economy.
It turned out that he had already expected it. Qin Hui glanced at Zhao Kai and said, yes, the emperor is so smart that he would not have thought of this. If the privy envoy wants to convince the emperor, he must find a way to solve this big problem.
Cai Jing also reacted immediately and said: "Yes, in any case, there are too few silver mines in our country. If we introduce silver coins, the domestic silver mines will not be enough to meet the needs. We can only rely on external silver. But copper is different. Our country's copper mines are abundant.
When the imperial court adopted coinage, it was tantamount to creating something from scratch, and the imperial courts of all dynasties used it to fill the national treasury."
The reason is very simple. Minting money means making money. Li Qi also said before that if the court mints 15 million guan of coins, it can make a net profit of 8 million guan. This was also the case in the past. If the treasury ran out of money, then it would mint coins.
But when it comes to silver coins, you don’t have to mine them, so the court can’t mint coins to make money, which invisibly harms the emperor’s interests.
Li Qi smiled and said: "The price of currency is a relative price, and the counterpart of currency is commodity price. There is an absolute relationship between commodity price and currency price, and they affect each other. The same is true for goods and currency. Our Song Dynasty Commodity
The world is number one, let’s talk about silk cloth. I wonder which country can compete with our Song Dynasty? It must also include tea, wine, etc. Our Song Dynasty is the largest export country. In the next hundred years, no one may be able to replace it, so we can completely rely on trade.
Absorb money from surrounding countries."
Qin Hui said: "Remember that we tried our best to prevent other countries from purchasing copper or copper coins from us. If silver becomes currency, other countries may do the same."
Li Qi shook his head and smiled: "The currency offensive is directly linked to the war strategy. Once a war breaks out, can they not buy weapons from us? Now there is a war in Japan and the west. They must be in urgent need of weapons and military supplies.
We have sufficient goods in the Song Dynasty, and many weapons will be on the verge of obsolescence. If we don’t get rich at this time, how long will it take? Do they want silver rather than their lives? Taking a step back, if there is no war, we can also provoke a war.
, or even go to war directly. Money can make all the difference these days. We who are rich can be more willful. Once the other party needs our assistance, then their country's gold and silver will flow into our Song Dynasty like a flood.
As for the interests of the emperor and the court, Shaozai, please don’t forget that many transactions are exclusive to the court, such as currency itself, weapons, tea, wine, salt, tea oil that will be released, etc. Although the profit of minting is very large, and the cost
Not high, but it will be constrained by copper mines, and trade is endless and unlimited. A chance coincidence may make tens of millions of taels of silver a year. This is also the law of economics. Profit and risk go hand in hand.
Yes, the higher the profit, the greater the risk, and the more stable the profit, the lower the risk. However, the economy of our Song Dynasty has reached a bottleneck. This bottleneck is the currency crisis that we have repeatedly failed to break through. Only by taking this gamble can we solve it once and for all.