When Li Xuan saw this discount, he also realized the seriousness of the problem!
Wang Haomen was just talking about what to use so much money for, but Li Xuan discovered another problem, that is inflation!
Although today's Tang Dynasty is still dominated by agriculture, the economic development of industry and commerce is very rapid. This can be seen from the growth of tax revenue from industry and commerce. The Ministry of Taxation predicts that this year's fiscal revenue will reach 6,000 yuan.
Five million taels of silver, and next year, it may increase to 70 million taels of silver.
This fiscal revenue budget does not include some newly occupied areas for the time being. The northern Huguang area, Sichuan area, and part of Shaanxi area are not included.
But why can we add five million taels of silver?
Agricultural taxes are levied based on the number of acres of land, and the number of acres cannot suddenly increase on a large scale, so the main driving force for the increase is the development of industry and commerce.
With the rapid development of industry and commerce, the turnover of money will be even faster and the circulation of currency will be more extensive. The impact of currency depreciation or appreciation will be even greater.
Through sea trade, the net inflow of silver every year reaches millions of silver. Even if the scale of trade remains unchanged, it will still be tens of millions in ten years and hundreds of millions in one hundred years.
The inflow of so much silver will inevitably cause the devaluation of silver!
Li Xuan dug up several more exchange rates of silver for gold and copper coins submitted by the tax department, and found that from the second year of Xuanping to the seventh year of Xuanping this year, the ratio of silver to copper coins had changed from one tael of silver to one tael of copper coins.
One thousand Xuanping Tongbao depreciated into one tael of silver and exchanged for 980 Xuanping Tongbao.
This is still the official exchange ratio of the Royal Bank. If it were private, it would probably fluctuate even more.
What this means is that the value of silver has depreciated by 2% in just five years!
Although the depreciation of silver was not simply caused by the large-scale inflow of silver caused by maritime trade, there were also a large number of gentry and landlords who took away a lot of silver hidden at home in order to invest in industry, commerce, or other investment activities.
It was taken out and deposited in the Royal Bank, thus allowing the silver to circulate into the market.
There are many reasons for the depreciation of silver.
As for this kind of depreciation, others may not be aware of the danger, but Li Xuan is aware of the danger!
Putting down many reports, Li Xuan stood up, walked to the window, and began to consider the issue of silver depreciation. As a latecomer, he knew very well that the silver standard had no future.
The biggest hidden danger is that the Tang Dynasty's own silver production is not too large. The largest silver producing area in the world is in the Americas, more precisely in North America. The Spanish and Portuguese, in the Americas and their cheap
In this way, ship after ship of silver was obtained and then transported to Europe. Part of it inevitably flowed into the Tang Dynasty through maritime trade.
During this transaction process, it seemed that the Tang Dynasty earned a large amount of silver, but it also caused the devaluation of domestic silver and caused an equally serious problem, that is, what Wang Haomen proposed: We want to do this
Why is there so much silver?
Wouldn’t it look good stored in a bank?
The greatest value of silver is that it is used as currency. It is valuable only when it is spent. If it is not spent, it is just a pile of useless metal. At the same time, those Europeans can continuously obtain a large amount of cheap silver from the Americas, and then from the continent
Tang Dynasty sells various genuine products here.
The more Li Xuan thought about it, the more he felt at a loss!
This is just like Americans in later generations printing some US dollar banknotes to serve as currency, and then other countries can print a lot of US dollars to buy things from the United States. No matter how you think about it, it feels ridiculous.
Li Xuan's ideal overseas trade system is for other countries to exchange agricultural and mineral products for industrial products of the Tang Dynasty.
The Tang Dynasty regarded overseas markets as a source of raw materials and a dumping ground for industrial products.
Instead of turning the Tang Dynasty into a dumping ground for other countries' silver.
It seems that we need to start preparing for the gold standard!
Silver was something that Datang could not control in a short period of time, and the overall output of silver was relatively large, making it difficult to completely control it.
But the global production of gold is lower. As a precious metal, it is less likely to depreciate and its value is stronger. It is impossible for foreign countries to buy things with a large amount of cheap gold.
Later, it slowly transitioned to the indirect gold standard, and finally to the credit standard.
In short, if you can get rid of silver as soon as possible, get rid of it as soon as possible!
However, it is not easy to implement the gold standard. First, sufficient gold reserves are needed. Today, Datang's main financial institution, the Royal Bank, has most of its precious metal reserves in silver, and the amount of gold is still relatively small.
As for the matter of hoarding gold, I can't rush it for a while.
But it doesn't matter. Since Li Xuan is aware of this problem, he will let the people below do it. At most, it will take more than ten years to reserve gold.
At the same time, he accurately used administrative means to intervene in the maritime trade market. From now on, the collection of various commodities and tariffs will no longer be priced in silver, but in gold. Of course, as a precious metal, silver is currently the price of the Tang Dynasty.
Common currency can still be used as the payment currency for transactions.
Li Xuan made a decision and directly issued an imperial decree. From now on, all imported and exported goods and tariffs will be priced in gold!
Many people actually don't understand this administrative order, and they don't even understand why such a seemingly meaningless imperial edict was issued. Is there any difference between denominating it in gold and denominating it in silver?
It doesn't matter if outsiders don't understand, they just need to do what Li Xuan said anyway.
At the same time, Li Xuan also began to instruct the Royal Bank to reserve gold as much as possible, reduce the outflow of gold coins, and give it to the three official trading companies, Datang Nanyang Trading Company, Datang Dongyang Trading Company, and Datang Western Trading Company.
, let them collect as much gold as possible when conducting overseas trade, instead of silver.
Among them, Datang Dongyang Trading Company is the focus of Li Xuan's attention, because Fuso is currently a very important gold producing area, and the price of gold there is relatively low. Relatively speaking, the prices of silver and copper coins are relatively high.
Many merchants transported copper coins in one ship and then shipped back gold in one ship.
At the same time, we encourage more imports, especially the import of various raw materials, and strive to re-spend the silver earned through trade in exchange for various agricultural products or industrial raw materials.
In short, Li Xuan hoped that in the next few years, the Tang Dynasty's foreign trade would not foolishly move boatloads of silver back to the bank, but instead purchase large amounts of raw materials and agricultural products.
Trade surplus is sometimes not a good thing for economic development!
Because if you earn so much silver and don’t spend it, it’s actually useless!
This is the different idea of Li Xuan and other ministers!
Through this incident, Li Xuan also noticed Wang Haomen. After looking through this person's resume, he found that this person was quite interesting. He came from a gentry family in Guangdong. Both his parents died when he was young. Because he was not the eldest son, he
He is just the younger brother of a partial family, so he is nominally the young master of a big family, but his life is no different from that of an ordinary well-off family.
This man was raised by servants!
Therefore, this man did not have all kinds of bad habits like many children of powerful people. He studied very hard. He was admitted as a scholar when he was young, and he was admitted as a scholar at the age of twenty-six.
After taking the Qianming Hui Examination for the first time and failing in Zhongshan, when he was preparing to take the exam for the second time, the Tang Dynasty conquered Guangdong. Then a year later, this person participated in the second imperial examination of the Tang Dynasty. Finally,
Ranked second.
A few years later, this person had successfully climbed to the key position of director of the Finance Department of the Ministry of Taxation.
Although the Financial Department of the Ministry of Taxation is not as powerful as the Grain Collection Department, its actual power is not small. The main authority of this department is to manage domestic financial institutions, large and small, and maintain the stability of the domestic financial system.
At the same time, the power of currency issuance also belongs to this department, which directly manages the mints in various places.
In fact, not only the Finance Department, but actually every department in the Tax Department is very important. Anyone who can firmly serve as the director of the first department of the Tax Department is not a simple role.
Although this Wang Hao family was born into a gentry, strictly speaking, he was from a poor family. At least in terms of his studies and official career, his family did not give him much help. On the contrary, now he has become the leader of the Wang family.
.
When it was introduced that import and export goods and tariffs should be priced in gold, Li Xuan also summoned him several times to ask some financial questions and found that his understanding of finance was not bad. Although limited by time and experience, his understanding was
It's relatively original, but it's also quite rare.
After being summoned by Li Xuan several times in a row, Wang Haomen himself knew that he might have come under the attention of the Holy Emperor, so he worked even harder and tried his best to promote gold pricing.
And this made Li Xuan's impression of him even better. Although such a person came from a traditional scholar's background, he had worked in the Finance Department of the Ministry of Taxation for so long, and his understanding of finance was not bad.
Maybe in a few years it can be reused.
Speaking of which, there are really a lot of talents that have emerged in the Taxation Department in recent years, and Wang Haomen is just one of them. Because of the special nature of the Taxation Department, the requirements for the abilities of officials are very high. At the same time, there are promotions within the Taxation Department.
They are also more particular about genuine materials, and people without any skills will not be able to get along just by relying on background or words.
Chen Lifu is a typical example. If his methods were not ruthless, how could he be promoted so quickly and become the acting director of the Inspection Division.
Wang Haomen is another typical example.
But it’s funny to say that the Taxation Department was the most powerful organization in the Tang Dynasty, and most of the officials in it were actually not new-style officials, but officials with traditional scholar backgrounds. This was true for Chen Lifu and Wang Haomen.
However, these officials with traditional scholar backgrounds were the most ruthless officials in the Tang Dynasty who attacked the gentry and landlords.
On the contrary, officials from the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises, the Ministry of Industry and other departments, which have the most Ph.D.s, mostly maintain a friendly attitude towards the gentry and landlord class and advocate for win-win cooperation.
However, the officials at the Ministry of Taxation are eager to confiscate the homes of landlords and gentry all over the world, and turn this into a political achievement for their own promotion and wealth!