1928: The rise of giant merchants

From ancient times to the present, the country has always used the silver standard currency system, just like Japan has always adhered to the gold standard system.

In martial arts historical novels or film and television dramas, we can often see ordinary people using copper coins as currency, while dignitaries use silver as currency.

But if it's like in TV movies, where the hero leaves a few taels of silver to pay after eating, it's really hard for the waiter to do it. He has to use a scale, because the difference of one cent of silver can mean a lot of difference.

Although the circulation of silver is not large, it is true that our country still followed the silver standard system until the Republic of China.

The well-known Smoking War caused the greatest harm to the country, which was the outflow of large amounts of silver.

At that time, our country was a big exporting country. Our silk, our porcelain, and our tea were continuously exported to the West, in exchange for a large amount of silver.

As for Western countries, there are almost no products that can be exported to our country, so they sit back and watch the loss of silver. The British quit, so they thought of a trick and sold a large amount of cigarettes to our country, which caused our people to lose weight after smoking cigarettes. Muscle jaundice, and at the same time a large amount of silver outflow.

After the founding of the Republic of China, the then Beiyang Government and now the Jinling National Government printed a large number of silver coins, which were made by blending silver with other metals.

During the warlords' melee, the currency system was once very chaotic because warlords in various places issued their own currencies. The most fatal reason was that the silver coins they produced were not correct! Many of them are named silver dollars, but there is no silver in them at all. This has led to an extreme proliferation of currency and extremely serious inflation.

After the principal came to power, the first thing he did was to unify all currencies within his jurisdiction, and he did not recognize any currency sold by other warlords. Now he is asking all places to use the currency printed by the Jinling National Government——

Those warlords were not happy before and still went their own way. You said what you said, and I used mine.

Now that the Central Plains War is over, the currency finally has a unified trend.

The monetary system was rectified, but the silver standard was not abolished.

In the current world situation, the largest circulation and holder of silver and gold is the United States, followed by Britain, France and Germany.

Ye Luo knew very well that after the U.S. stock bubble burst, the world ushered in a financial crisis. During the Great Depression, the U.S. economy collapsed severely. As the country with the largest silver and gold holdings, the U.S. silver price these days and gold prices are plummeting.

At the end of 1929, U.S. silver was still selling for 58 cents per ounce, but now in the second half of 1930, the price of U.S. silver had fallen by half, to about just over 20 cents per ounce.

The United States is a large country that traditionally produces silver and gold. American capital controls 66% of the world's silver and gold production, and 77% of the silver and gold smelting. However, the silver and gold production in the United States is mainly concentrated in seven western states: Utah, Ireland Daho, Arizona, Montana, Nevada, Colorado and West Moxico.

The plummeting prices of silver and gold have deeply affected entrepreneurs in these seven states. Just last month, capitalists and consortiums in these seven states banded together to provide support and jointly requested Congress to issue new policies to reverse the plummeting price of gold and silver. situation.

Senators from these seven states formed a silver and gold group and lobbied politicians everywhere to formulate new policies to save gold and silver prices.

Long before Ye Luo went to Japan, he had discussed this issue with Franklin on the phone when he approached Franklin to communicate about Japan's relations.

Franklin was very ambitious, and with the help of Ye Luo, he had already mastered a large amount of capital in New York State and several developed states. Compared with Ye Luo's idea of ​​being in a corner when he first came to the United States, now he really has the idea of ​​​​aspirations. Got it!

Yelo suggested to him at that time that he should try to get the support of Democratic senators so that he could get a large number of votes.

He is running for president, and his biggest opponent at the moment is the current president Hoover. The current situation between the two of them is that Hoover is still far ahead.

But if Franklin could get the support of seven western states, the situation could be reversed.

Franklin believed it, but he didn't know how to get the support of those senators.

Of course Ye Luo knew that this matter would be facilitated by the Gold and Silver Act, but he certainly could not say it explicitly. He just reminded Franklin indirectly.

In this way, under the joint operation of multiple power groups, Franklin took the lead not long ago, and the government had to sign the U.S. Gold and Silver Act with those consortiums. This bill directly contributed to the skyrocketing price of silver and gold around the world.

The core of the so-called Gold and Silver Act is that the future U.S. government has the responsibility to increase the prices of silver and gold worldwide. The price of silver must rise from more than 20 cents per ounce to more than 1.29 US dollars per ounce, and the price of gold must rise from 1 The U.S. dollar can buy 1.5 grams of pure gold. It has increased to 3 U.S. dollars to buy more than 1.5 grams of pure gold!

You can stop when the gold and silver prices rise above this amount. As long as it does not reach this amount, or the value of silver in the U.S. treasury is less than one-third of the value of gold, the U.S. government must increase its purchase of silver in the international market. with gold.

In the international market, the way to quickly increase the price of a certain commodity is very simple.

As long as you have enough money, you can sit on the bank and buy it to raise the price of this product crazily.

For example, if you think the price of oil is low, okay, then you go crazy and buy oil. If the demand exceeds the supply, the price of oil will definitely rise.

Just like the real estate speculators in later generations, if you think the housing prices in a certain city are not high enough, well, you invest huge sums of money to buy all the houses on the market in this city, and the housing prices in this city will definitely rise.

The same is true for silver and gold. Since the United States introduced the Silver and Gold Act, the U.S. government has spent a lot of money to buy silver and gold internationally. According to the current prices of silver and gold, it is necessary to raise the prices of silver and gold to that level. , the amount of silver and gold that needs to be purchased makes people feel numb just thinking about it.

According to incomplete statistics later, in a short period of time, the U.S. government bought as much gold and silver as the world's six-year silver production capacity and five-year gold production capacity. This also caused the international gold and silver prices to continue to soar.

Originally, gold and silver were bound to the monetary system and basically rose and fell at the same time. Silver has a larger circulation and is more susceptible to deflation and inflation, while gold is highly bound to the US dollar and is susceptible to the impact of the U.S. economic situation.

Now that the U.S. government is doing this, the world's gold and silver currency structure will collapse!

Of course, the agricultural states and silver-producing and gold-producing states in the United States have made a lot of money. The only unlucky countries are those countries where the gold standard and silver standard are the basic currency systems!

Countries with a silver standard currency system are the most unlucky, followed by countries with a gold standard currency system.

Isn’t that the Republic of China and Japan? (End of chapter)