Without money, what is the point of being a traitor?

Chapter 444 I am the Ming Dynasty, I am the people

Zhu Houzhao vaguely felt that this person did not seem to be a regular Jinyiwei.

This person...

Can you really consult on state affairs?
Zhu Houzhao hesitated for a moment, looked at the people around him, and asked them to leave first.

After the people left, I finally asked about some things that I was concerned about.

He said to Pei Yuan, "Although I have built a strong army with the help of my adopted sons, the money and food for these soldiers and horses, as well as replacement armor and armor are a problem."

"I asked the Ministry of Revenue and the Ministry of Works for it, but Sun Jiao and Li Qian both said that since the matter involved military forces, we must be cautious and need a clear approval from the Ministry of War."

"But He Jian from the Ministry of War is very stubborn. He refuses to list these funds and supplies on the grounds that there are no such troops in the Ministry of War's books. What do you think I should do?"

If the person in front of him was not the emperor, Pei Yuan would pat his chest and say, "Don't worry, I have arranged it all."

But since the person in front of him was Zhu Houzhao, Pei Yuan could only turn his boasting into flattery and said shamelessly, "Your Majesty is the Son of Heaven, and He Jian is the enemy of the Emperor, which is no different from a clown. I dare to assert that within ten days, the matter will be resolved."

Zhu Houzhao was also a wise man who could distinguish between loyalty and treachery. Upon hearing this, he rebuked the treacherous Jinyiwei in front of him, "Although you are sincere, you should not humiliate the ministers because of your blind loyalty."

After hearing this, Qian Hu dared not say anything more.

Zhu Houzhao said worriedly, "I am the emperor. I can't wait for fate for everything, can I? Pei Yuan, do you have any ideas to help me solve the troubles at hand?"

Pei Yuan thought for a moment, and seeing that there was no one around, he said, "When I first joined the Jinyiwei, I was ordered to follow the East Factory to investigate the issue of commercial taxation in Jiangnan. After that, I arrived at the Zhenxie Qianhu Office and was ordered to help escort the silver of the Suzhou and Hangzhou weaving offices to Beijing."

"As for other matters involving money and grain, I don't quite understand them."

"But since the imperial court has just won a great victory and is now in great prestige, and now has a talented eunuch like Zhang Rui as the governor of the East Factory, then I think the troublesome things in the past should be solved easily."

"Your Majesty, please urge the East Factory to send tax inspectors to the local areas, and have the eunuchs collect the commercial taxes in person. Get some money for the commercial taxes as soon as possible."

Zhu Houzhao listened and thought, "That's a solution."

Then he asked, "What else?"

Pei Yuan had an idea and wanted to take advantage of Zhu Houzhao's concern about food and money to briefly mention the matter of the Ming treasure notes to lay the groundwork in advance.

But when I think about it, I’m not a big foodie yet, so it seems a bit premature to bring this up now.

He immediately said subconsciously, "Your Majesty, you can ask for advice from 'Xiao Zhongda' He Huan..."

After he finished speaking, Pei Yuan realized that he was used to criticizing He Huan and almost angered Zhu Houzhao again.

If Pei Yuan remembered correctly, the Ming Dynasty's treasure notes would be completely abandoned in a few years.

The reason is very simple. The actual value of the Ming Dynasty's treasure notes is already lower than the printing cost. If the country issues more treasure notes, it cannot even make enough money to pay for the paper and ink. Basically, it can be said that the more it prints, the more it loses.

There are many factors involved.

One very important aspect is the relationship between supply and demand.

The imperial court issued a large amount of treasure notes, for example, to pay officials' salaries, reward meritorious officials, and print more to fill the shortfall in national finances.

However, the court had very narrow channels for recovering treasure notes.

The economy of this era was mainly agricultural, and the people produced mainly grain, cotton, raw silk and the like. The court also distributed and consumed mainly grain, cotton, raw silk and the like to officials and the army.

Therefore, when the imperial court collected taxes, it directly collected these agricultural products, preventing merchants from making a profit from the price difference.

This is the so-called true color tax.

The products subject to the original tax are all in urgent need, and most of them can be used directly after being issued by the court, which can be said to be full of sincerity.

The discount tax corresponds to commodities that are not easy to collect, such as fishermen selling abalone. How can the court collect it?
Wouldn't that make things difficult for Fat Tiger?

Therefore, discounted goods can be deducted using gold, silver, copper coins, or things covered by the original tax.

Among these, only a small part is made by folding banknotes.

So what are the main applications of banknotes?

Commercial tax, and part of the discount tax.

Commercial taxes, to be precise, are commercial taxes levied by several major customs offices.

Because of the commercial taxes from other places, the imperial court could not get much money.

Considering that after the abolition of Liu Jin's new policy, officials were able to smuggle large amounts of money to avoid taxes, one can imagine how much treasure notes could be recovered from this already reduced caliber.

The discount tax takes into account that the common people may have some banknotes in their hands, allowing them to pay taxes in a certain proportion.

But for the common people who make up the vast majority of the population of the Ming Dynasty, they have no extra money at all. They are happy to save a few more stones of grain. What is Baochao?
Therefore, the huge difference in volume between issuance and recovery led to the continuous depreciation of Ming Baochao.

After the Ming Baochao depreciated, every link in the circulation tended to retain gold, silver and copper coins as much as possible in order to preserve the wealth in their hands, and to spend the Ming Baochao at a low price.

This resulted in the Baochao depreciating every time it circulated in the Ming Dynasty's economic system.

If one wants to break out of this cycle of depreciation, one must seek to recover and redeem the money from the court.

However, the loopholes for recycling and cashing out are small, which has led to a vicious cycle of depreciation.

Does the collapse of the Baochao system mean that there is a large amount of Ming Baochao accumulated in society?
Not!
The value of Ming Baochao kept depreciating. After the father and son, Hongwu and Yongle, had a good time, when it came to the era of the great saintly grandson, in order to raise the price of Ming Baochao, Emperor Xuande not only stopped issuing new banknotes one after another, but also froze the banknotes in the warehouse and destroyed the damaged and waste banknotes.

There have been few records of restarting money printing since then.

In other words, the latest treasure notes on the market now have a history of at least eighty or ninety years.

With the paper and printing technology of this era, a large number of damaged and waste banknotes would have been produced over the years, and the total amount of currency should have been greatly reduced.

However, the stereotype that Baochao will depreciate has become a problem, and many people are not aware of the changes and still habitually use Baochao at a low price.

So what is the indicator that Baochao has hit bottom?

This is an incident that happened on the tenth day of the tenth month in the seventh year of the Zhengde reign.

On this day, Zuo Shaojian of the Ministry of Revenue's Si Yao Ku claimed that the treasury was short of money, so he hoped that in addition to the silver from the Yangzhou banknote customs, the two banknote customs in Linqing and Hexi would be allowed to accept money and banknotes from the first month of the eighth year of Zhengde. The three banknote customs in Huai'an, Suzhou, and Hangzhou began to accept money and banknotes from the first month of the ninth year of Zhengde. Except for the silver from Yangzhou weaving, all the above money was sent to the Si Yao Ku for use. Jiujiang banknote customs still collected silver and sent it to the internal transport warehouse.

You should know that before this, in the fifth year of Zhengde, the imperial court had ordered that all taxes from the seven major banknote customs be converted into silver and included in the internal transportation warehouse.

Therefore, the bottom of the money in the Siyut Treasury on October 10th, the seventh year of Zhengde, was actually a very strong signal that the treasure notes had bottomed out.

In sharp contrast to this, during the Zhengtong period, the Si Yao Ku also reported that there was no more storage space because there were too many treasure notes. However, this signal was not noticed by people at that time.

Or even if someone notices it, they don’t have the confidence to try to prop up this credit currency that has already gone bankrupt.

After all..., if the court officials don't want to receive Ming Treasure Notes when they get their salaries, then it's better not to talk about Ming Treasure Notes.

As for whether the promotion of Baochao can be promoted and whether it can be accepted by society, according to Pei Yuan's opinion, as long as military expenditures are issued in Baochao, it will definitely be promoted.

A person holding a knife will not turn the precious banknotes in his hand into paper.

In many people's minds, Japan has rich silver mines, and Southeast Asia has a lot of gold and copper mines. Whether it is war plunder or economic exploitation, there is hope that it can be used to make up for the liquidity of Ming Dynasty's finances.

But this is meaningless in this era.

Because the gap between the rich and the poor and economic exchanges in this era are not enough to support such an economic model.

A large number of landlords and powerful people would still exchange difficult-to-preserve crops, silk, and porcelain for gold and silver and bury them in the land.

The labor condensed in mining and refining, as well as the surplus value in the pricing of gold and silver, are all buried in the soil or made into utensils, losing their original meaning as currency.

The country's liquidity will not be improved much, and a large number of people will need to be organized to do meaningless things and bear the risks involved.

If these were the only factors, Pei Yuan could accept it.

Moreover, gold, silver and copper can be treated as commodities and provided to the society at high prices after mining.

However, these metal currencies posed a fatal risk to the ruling regime.

That is their value, locked into themselves.

Whether it is the Han Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty, the Song Dynasty, the Yuan Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty, or even the Qing Dynasty.

Gold is gold, silver is silver, and copper coins are copper coins.

The Ming Baochao is the treasure note of the "Ming Dynasty".

Only by binding the wealth of this era and the richest people of this era to the Ming Dynasty will they be truly willing to defend the Ming Dynasty.

If the southern economy, the large amount of wealth in its hands is reflected in the Ming Dynasty treasure notes.

So when the Jurchens invaded, how could they be so happy and think it was none of their business?
So when a disaster hits, the people are starving and the postman named Li is replaced, how can they feel at ease and do nothing?

As long as the Ming Dynasty can unleash its powerful national strength, there is nothing it cannot do in this era.

Pei Yuan had an awakening at a very early age.

His enemy is neither the people on the plate nor those sitting at the table, but this era that is rolling forward and facing change.

The real economic model that Pei Yuan envisioned was to abolish the tax in kind through the Single Whip Law, tie the Ming Baochao to the Ming's taxation, and then promote the value of the Ming Baochao to rise through massive circulation demand.

The rising value of Ming Baochao will induce more people to hold Ming Baochao, thereby continuing to push up the price of Ming Baochao.

At the current market price, one penny can even be worth dozens or hundreds of strings of Ming treasure notes.

Pei Yuan did not expect the one-string treasure note to return to its face value of one thousand wen, but even if it went back to one wen for one-string treasure note, there would still be room for an increase of dozens or even hundreds of times.

This huge profit margin will provide strong liquidity support for the rise of Ming Baochao.

At the same time, gold and silver can be continuously recycled in the market and buried underground in Taicang, allowing the Ming Dynasty's treasure notes to penetrate into every corner of society.

The small group of people who hold state power will not be able to absorb enough gold and silver to accumulate value, so they will strive to maintain the value of the large amount of Ming treasure notes in their hands and actively expand the scope of use of Ming treasure notes.

They will work hard to circulate Ming treasure notes and transform them into commodities, and then they will actively and automatically collect gold, silver and copper from all over the world.

This economic model is very likely to be realized.

After the Age of Discovery began, almost all the silver in the world flowed to the Ming Dynasty.

When those powerful people who were pursuing value preservation began to more greedily absorb metals and land in order to break free from the economic control of Ming Baochao, the entire Ming Dynasty completely began to flourish.

Pei Yuan’s current goal is to take the initiative in making the move.

Collect a large amount of Ming Dynasty treasure notes, which are like waste paper, in advance, and accumulate original wealth by taking advantage of the opportunity when the Ming Dynasty treasure notes restore their credit and their value rises, and then rely on a broad perspective to become an important person in this economic model.

First, bind the fate of the entire Ming Dynasty to the Ming Treasure Notes, and then bind the Ming Treasure Notes to yourself, to realize the ultimate concept of "I am the Ming Dynasty, I am millions of people". This is reasonable, right?
……

Zhu Houzhao was not in a very good mood because the matter of Liang Chu was not handled properly. Seeing Pei Yuan's rash words, he scolded Pei Yuan a few more times and asked him to leave.

Pei Yuan estimated that after a few days, when the affair of Queen Xia was exposed, Zhu Houzhao would most likely want to see him again, so he left obediently without mentioning anything else.

Pei Yuan got down from the rockery and then he remembered that his butt was injured, so he quickly changed to a limping posture.

When he turned around, he saw Zhu Houzhao glaring at him from the pavilion with a malicious look.

Pei Yuan felt a little annoyed. Why bother to provoke him? Why not go back to Shandong and hide there first.

During this trip to meet Zhu Houzhao, Pei Yuan basically achieved his main goal of getting the Enke passed at the highest level.

What troubled Pei Yuan was that because of the conflict between himself and Zhang Yong, the position of Zhang Rui, the eunuch of the East Factory, began to become antagonistic.

Moreover, this guy also involved himself in the conflict between Empress Dowager Zhang's family and Queen Xia's family.

Thinking of Zhu Houzhao's troubled family affairs, Pei Yuan suddenly felt a sense of alarm.

What the hell!

I was just busy watching other people having fun. I’m also nineteen years old!

I don’t have a son yet?!
If I don't give birth to a son in the next one or two years, I'm afraid I'll be stubborn and confused, and my foundation will be unstable.

My Ming Dynasty, my millions of people...

Pei Yuan no longer cared about pretending to be lame, and walked out of Taiping Warehouse with a pale face.

Chen Xinjian, who was guarding outside, saw Captain Pei so dispirited and with a slight wound on his butt, and did not dare to think too much about it for a moment.

He hurriedly came forward and asked, "Is Qianhu okay?"

Pei Yuan said in a panic, "It's urgent. Please ask General Song to come to the mansion to discuss it."

(End of this chapter)