1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 247 Currency Exchange
From being surprised at the boldness of the Haihan people at the beginning, to gradually understanding the situation, and gradually getting used to the Haihan people's control over the Shengli Port area, Li Nai has gradually accepted this fact in several contacts with the Haihan people in the past few months. ——In Shengli Port, the Yazhou government is not in charge, but the omnipotent Haihan Executive Committee.

Although Shengli Port and Tiandu are only one county, the capabilities displayed by the Haihan Executive Committee are far from being comparable to ordinary county yamen, even for a state-level yamen like Yazhou. Nai thinks that there is no bright spot in front of the Haihan people.However, for these merchants who came to Victory Port for the first time, the relatively independent status of Victory Port really surprised them.

The next place Ren Liang took them to was the Victory Port Currency Exchange Center, which is currently the only building in the business district that has been completed and put into use.The four walls of this building covering an area of ​​about one acre are made of thick stones, with a thick and simple style. It looks dusty and inconspicuous from the outside, but it is one of the most important places in the port area. Almost all the cash in the port area is stored in this building.

After Ren Liang brought the merchants here, the staff of the Ministry of Finance took over and introduced the unique currency financial system of Shengli Port to the merchants.

At present, the Finance Department of the Time Travel Group mainly focuses on basic accounting work, but recently the executive committee has also handed over the preparation work of the banking system to the Finance Ministry to be fully responsible, so this department has also changed from an idle office to an office. It became a fragrant bun, and even Qiu Yuan, who had long been assigned to the foreign affairs department at the Cliff Office, sent a report requesting to be transferred back to the finance department. After all, he worked as a cashier before crossing. Also contact more.However, even if Qiu Yuan could have an additional identity in the finance department, he would not be able to take advantage of the competition within the finance department, because the executive committee had basically finalized the candidates for the leadership of the bank.

This candidate was recommended by Schneider. As the director of the finance department, he recommended several available people to the executive committee before leaving the local area to be responsible for preparing the future central bank in Victory Port.

Cai Jinmei is one of Schneider's fancy candidates, and he personally invited him to participate in the crossing.This woman who was not yet 30 years old worked in the credit management department of a commercial bank in a certain city before crossing over, and she had become a deputy supervisor. Also regarded as partisans.Although Cai Jinmei herself did not do anything illegal or disciplinary, this whirlwind still blew her away from Guangming Avenue, and she was transferred to a remote district and county as the head of the sales department.

Schneider and Cai Jinmei got acquainted at work, and made friends as soon as they came and went.After Schneider went to Guangzhou to meet Tao Donglai and others for the first time, he got the news of Cai Jinmei's transfer, and immediately tried to encourage Cai Jinmei to participate in the time-traveling operation.At that time, Cai Jinmei, who suffered serious setbacks in her career and was in a disheartened state, did not think too much, so she quit her job and flew to Guangzhou under Schneider's persuasion.After that, she entered the Ministry of Finance as a matter of course, and was regarded as a reusable subordinate by Schneider.

The reason why Schneider values ​​Cai Jinmei so much is not because he has any affair with her, but because he really likes her professionalism.Cai Jinmei has worked in the bank for seven or eight years, from a teller to the deputy director of the credit department. Her personal ability is beyond doubt, and she is very familiar with the operation of the banking system. She is an indispensable and important pawn in the financial system planned by Schneider .With such a No. [-] person, Time Travel Group can make fewer mistakes and avoid detours when building the financial system.

Cai Jinmei may not be regarded as a beauty in the eyes of most men. Her height of 1.7 meters [-] is enough to make half of the male compatriots in the crossing group feel inferior, but she is as thin as a match, and there is no body curve or beauty at all.And she also has a very fatal problem that is her poisonous tongue. More than half of the people who have dealt with her have been humiliated by her words.The ID used by Cai Jinmei on the internal forum of Time Travel Group is her original name, and she is also one of the well-known trolls. Except for Mr. Yuan, who is too senior to speak ill, the other members of the executive committee are probably Almost all of Weibo has been sprayed by her writing, including her Bole Schneider.

In view of this situation, although Cai Jinmei is single, there is still no one in the time travel group where there are more men than women and few women.However, Schneider and other members of the executive committee believe that because of this, Cai Jinmei, who has extremely simple social relations, is more suitable to manage the money bag-if she has enemies with anyone, she will not easily form cliques, and without a family, it can greatly reduce the possibility of using power for personal gain possibility.

"Bosses, this is Ms. Cai Jinmei, who is in charge of finance. Ms. Cai Jinmei will explain the detailed rules of local currency exchange." After Ren Liang's brief introduction, he immediately slipped away.After he became the director of the Hong Kong District Management Committee, he has dealt with the Ministry of Finance a lot. Because of the slow construction of the currency exchange center, he was chased and sprayed by Cai Jinmei not once or twice, and he knew that this woman was not to be messed with.

Cai Jinmei succinctly explained the local currency exchange rules and exchange methods, and reiterated the regulations on using circulation notes as the only currency in Victory Port.After finishing speaking, Cai Jinmei looked around the crowd arrogantly and said, "If you have any questions, you can ask me now."

Someone said: "What if you don't want to exchange money for your coupons?"

Cai Jinmei glanced at this person, and responded coldly: "If you don't want to change, don't change, no one will force you to change!"

That person didn't expect Cai Jinmei's attitude to be so tough, and he said in amazement: "Then I won't change it!"

"Write down this business name and don't accept their money!" Cai Jinmei became even more tempered: "In Shengli Port, you can't buy even a hair of silver. Let me see how you do business!"

Hearing this, the man remembered that Li Nai seemed to have said before that only negotiable coupons can be used in this place, and money is useless here.Just when he didn't know what to do, he saw a middle-aged man in Haihan's short jacket and brought a few people in: "Xiao Cai, don't be so stiff when dealing with new customers!"

Ren Liang appeared beside him at the right time: "Let me introduce to you, this is Mr. Tao Donglai from our Haihan Executive Committee."

"I have admired you for a long time!" "I have heard Mr. Tao's name for a long time..." "I have admired Boss Tao for a long time..."

A group of merchants present stood up to greet each other. Before they came to Shengli Port, they also spent a lot of energy collecting information about Haihan from various channels, and Tao Donglai has faintly become Haihan No. 1 in the rumors of the outside world. image.

After Tao Donglai greeted everyone, he continued the topic just now: "The reason why we set up this currency exchange system in Victory Port is not to covet your money, but to facilitate everyone's transactions here. You can try to think about it." , the quality of silver and copper coins brought by each family is different, and it is quite troublesome to settle the settlement, but we exchange them into a unified currency for everyone, which is convenient to carry and easy to count, and there is no problem of folding colors. Everyone When leaving Victory Port, you can exchange the circulation notes you hold in your hand for cash silver, and the silver we take out is uniform in quality and will definitely not be lower than the standard of official silver."

Tao Donglai winked at Cai Jinmei, and the latter asked someone to take out a sample of the silver ingot that had been prepared.These silver ingots are all cast by the crossing group themselves. They are standard double-winged silver ingots with the Haihan character logo cast on them. The weights are divided into five specifications: one tael, five taels, ten taels, 50 taels, and 100 taels for easy counting. .At the moment, silver scales were also prepared for everyone to weigh on the spot.After seeing the samples, even the merchant who questioned the necessity of exchanging readily admitted that the quality of the Haihan silver ingots was indeed fine.

Tao Donglai went on to say: "Everyone, we have a large amount of money exchanged with the outside world. It is calculated at 10 taels every month, but there has never been any problem. Don't worry, everyone, the money is here. We will send someone to take care of it on our behalf, and we will not miss a single penny!"

Ren Liang chimed in and said: "Bosses, if you want to exchange money, hurry up. After lunch, I will take you to visit various local products. Those who do not have circulation coupons will not be able to place orders." Oh!"

When Ren Liang got to the point, the merchants could no longer hold back.

"Change! Change for 2000 taels first!" "Zhang San, hurry back to the boat and bring the silver box!" "Mr. Tao, how can I exchange gold ingots?"

For this chaotic situation, Cai Jinmei was well prepared, and immediately asked the staff to guide these merchants to several counters for exchange procedures.Although there were some small disputes in the middle because of the color folding of the silver, in general the whole exchange process went on in an orderly manner.Every merchant has more or less exchanged some circulation coupons. Although it is a bit distressing to see boxes of cash turned into a stack of colorful small papers in an instant, but thinking that these small papers must be used for subsequent purchases Films can only be carried out, and merchants can't care so much.

In just one hour, the exchange center received more than 3 taels of silver and more than 700 taels of gold, and issued a corresponding number of circulation coupons to merchants.According to the current exchange rate, the exchange rate between Haihan circulation notes and silver is still one to one, that is, one Haihan yuan is exchanged for one tael of silver.However, because the silver quality brought by merchants is uneven, this kind of exchange will also be processed according to the actual situation.

Although it seems that this measure of the exchange center has no intuitive benefits. After collecting silver of different colors, it has to be refined and recast into high-purity silver ingots to be returned to merchants who need to withdraw cash, but the Executive Committee is very clear that this is not the case. Not pointless useless work.

First of all, this measure can gradually establish credit for the banking system, prepare for the future output of the financial system, and establish a currency system based on precious metals; secondly, concentrate all precious metals in the hands of the Executive Committee, and the use is more controllable Circulating coupons are used as the local currency, so that the executive committee can effectively control the local economic lifeline, which has a very intuitive effect on price control in the current public ownership environment; third, this is also to allow foreign merchants to form local The concept of Haihan as the main force has gradually established the external authority of the Haihan Executive Committee.Finally, after the silver ingots cast with the Haihan logo circulated in the Ming society, it could also effectively increase Haihan's economic and cultural influence.

Of course, it is not that no one has questioned this, because this recasting process can easily cause the Gresham effect, that is, the phenomenon of bad money driving out good money.After a large number of Haihan silver ingots with good quality and uniform specifications enter the pockets of merchants in the Ming Dynasty, they will probably withdraw from the market circulation and become treasures for collection, while merchants who trade with the crossing group will always use inferior silver ingots of different quality If this situation continues for a long time, it will have a negative impact on Haihan's economy.

However, the Ministry of Finance soon explained at the public debate held by the Executive Committee. According to the knowledge of modern economy, Gresham’s law is actually a currency phenomenon exclusive to the period of coin circulation, and the current Port of Victory area has already Beginning to gradually replace precious metal currency with convertible banknotes. This is actually a debt certificate issued by the financial department of the Transit Group. It is currently in the credit establishment stage and still needs to be linked to precious metals.And when the economic aggregate of the Transit Group reaches a certain scale and the bank's credit is recognized by the society, it can start to issue real credit currency, break away from the standard of precious metals, and independently perform the function of currency, which is the currency of various countries that will be used in later generations.

And when convertible banknotes and precious metal coins exist at the same time, the effect of Gresham's law will often be invalid, coupled with the protection of the semi-mandatory exchange measures adopted by Victory Port, and the current huge surplus in the foreign trade of the Transit Group , It can be said that the loss caused to the Crossing Group on the issue of the fineness of precious metal currency is extremely limited. Compared with the huge benefits that the current monetary policy can bring in the future, this loss is completely acceptable.

In the final analysis, this is still a matter of actual purchasing power. As long as a single currency system is maintained in the territory controlled by the Transit Group, the actual purchasing power of precious metal currencies will always approach zero. Circulating coupons are the real "good currency" .And as the territory and influence of the Time Traveling Group continue to expand, the credit of the circulation coupons or paper money will become more and more stable, and this is enough for the early development of the Traveling Group.

After the currency exchange, as one of the local traditions, merchants who came to Victory Port for the first time were treated with a welcome banquet.Of course, Tao Donglai did not forget to sell various local spices, fruits, crops and seafood to merchants in a timely manner during the banquet.

Compared with the export of industrial products that have achieved good results repeatedly, the pace of agricultural development is relatively slow.A large number of commercial crops have to wait for one to two years, or even four or five years before they can start to make profits, so there are not many varieties that can be sold.The only agricultural product stored in large quantities locally is probably rice. In addition to the hundreds of acres of rice fields developed by the Ministry of Agriculture that have been harvested for two seasons, the cargo ships returning from North Vietnam will also bring back some rice as a strategic reserve for the base camp.Especially after the start of the North Vietnamese immigration plan, because the population is about to usher in a period of rapid population growth, the executive committee also specially adjusted the transportation capacity to increase the import of North Vietnamese rice.However, exporting rice to the mainland does not make much sense. The price is more than ten times lower than that of private salt. With this capacity, it is better to transport more salt.

After they were full of wine and food, various merchants presented their manifests one after another, explaining the types and quantities of the goods they brought.These goods are basically purchased in accordance with the requirements of the Guangzhou Office. Most of the various raw materials and daily necessities required by the Transit Group, so there is no problem in the intention to purchase, but there are certain differences in the price of a small number of commodities. Controversy, but generally it will not affect the final transaction result-after all, it has been shipped from such a long distance. Could it be that a little price difference cannot be negotiated before being pulled back to Guangzhou?No one would be so stupid, not to mention that the quotations given by the Haihan people were not without profit, and often a deal was reached after a few disputes.

The next thing is the highlight that the merchants have been looking forward to for many days. They traveled thousands of miles from Guangzhou to this remote port, not just to sell those goods. "Fu Ruifeng" has made a lot of money in Guangzhou by relying on this in the past few months. Everyone has been jealous for a long time, and now it is finally their turn to wait for this opportunity.

Since there are many merchants coming to Victory Port this time, the business department does not intend to adopt a one-on-one trade negotiation model.In fact, after receiving the telegram notification from the Guangdong Office in advance, the relevant departments formulated a series of new sales strategies to deal with the collective visit of foreign merchants.

This time the product launch event was arranged in the meeting room in Base No. [-]. All the merchants found a card on the arranged seat, which said A, B, C, D, etc. Tianqian, and each family took one.

Ren Liang explained: "Because there are too many bosses who have come to Shengli Port to take care of business this time, and the quantity of goods we have prepared is relatively limited, for the sake of fairness, we will adopt the method of public bidding for the sale this time."

As soon as Ren Liang said this, the merchants all made a low voice of discussion.This mode of auction is not unfamiliar to them. They are not dissatisfied with Haihan people's use of this mode to sell goods, because it is well known that Haihan's goods are in short supply, and there is nothing wrong with Haihan people doing this. After all, who They all want to sell their things at a higher price.Some people regretted that they should not have waited until the fleet set off from Guangzhou together. If they had gone south immediately after getting the news from the Guangzhou Office, they would have returned with a full load by now.

(End of this chapter)