"How much money is circulating in the domestic market right now? Have any of you made similar statistics or estimates? Qiang Quansheng, the former director of the State Administration of Precious Metals, the current finance minister and a member of the Central Executive Committee, who is over fifty years old, asked a group of subordinates questions in his office.

Most of the subordinates who have been summoned today are people from the financial system, such as Zhou Shenwo, the current director of the General Administration of Precious Metals, who succeeded to the position of "governor of the central bank", the presidents of the largest banks in China (the Northwest Reclamation Bank, the United Industrial Credit Bank, and the Commercial Settlement Bank, and the Banco de la Plata is a joint venture bank with a Genoese as the president, so they were not invited to participate in the financial work conference), the director of the First Mint, and the section chief of the Mei organ specializing in economic statistics. The economy is shaped by the people of shì.

Today's Eastern Coast Republic is still relatively well-funded, but of course it is only "relative". Most of the pitiful deposits absorbed by the major banks were lent to large backbone enterprises with the ability to earn foreign exchange through exports, and the profits they obtained through lending were also forced to buy a large number of national construction bonds.

Most of the bank deposits were lent to large state-owned enterprises, and the fledgling private sector on the East Coast was left to feat. Most of these enterprises are concentrated in the light industry aiming at the domestic market, such as machine flour making, furniture manufacturing, rope making, pickling products workshop, fruit deep processing, oil extraction, feed production, dairy products and other industries, which are basically closely related to the daily production and life of the people, and the products produced are mainly used in the East Coast China.

Among these industries, except for a few industries with deep mechanization (such as flour), other industries are limited by factors such as production scale, labor costs, financing costs, and insufficient advanced technology, and their development is not very rapid. As a result, it is necessary to import some products from neighboring Brazil and Peru to fill the gap, which makes the whole country a little dissatisfied. To this end, the Government Council held a special economic work conference some time ago. The focus is on how to channel domestic capital into light industries that these countries are not yet able to take care of, so as to increase productivity. Prosper the domestic commodity market and reduce the cost of living for the common people.

In this meeting, the financial sector can be regarded as the focus of attention, and the opinion of the Government Council is that the financial department should give full play to its subjective initiative and actively guide the capital precipitated in the private sector to invest in the industry, so as to improve the utilization rate of funds and create more wealth. After all, only let money do a constant "trip". in order to realize its true value.

"According to our statistics over the years, the total amount of monetary wealth in the hands of less than 300,000 local citizens may have exceeded 12 million yuan, of which about a quarter is deposited in the form of promissory notes, and the rest is precious metals - well, more than 90% is silver." Zhou Shenwo, director of the General Administration of Precious Metals, cleared his throat and replied.

To be honest, although he made a lot of reference to some previous statistics, in the final analysis, he still relied on estimation and guessing. Internally, they make calculations based on various algorithms, such as wage scales, price index tables, and the production and wholesale quantities of major commodities (grain, cloth, salt, meat, fish, etc.). Finally, the respective numbers jù were synthesized to reach this conclusion. As for whether this number is accurate or not, it is up to everyone. Anyway, the Government Council accepted the answer given by the State Administration of Precious Metals and formulated policies based on it.

However, Qiang Quansheng himself seems to have some doubts about this number, because in the number handed to him by Zhou Shenwo, it is clearly pointed out that the wealth accumulated in China is about 12 million yuan (and the currency circulating in the market is about 2 million at the same time), which makes him a little puzzled, why is there so little currency in circulation but there is no strict tightening of the capital in the market? In this regard, Zhou Shenwo explained that most of the commercial trade on the East Coast is now accustomed to being done in the form of checks, bills of exchange, etc., which is actually just to transfer the control of currency from one bank account to another, and does not require a lot of additional precious metal coins in the market.

In addition, he also noted. The people of the East Coast - especially the farmers - were accustomed to hid their precious metal coins in order to deal with unknown risks. This method is so popular that it has flowed into various currencies on the East Coast over the years. A significant portion of this has never been put into circulation since, as is best illustrated by the minting records of the First East Coast Mint. They mint a lot of gold and silver coins day long, but the market is like a monster and it is very distressing.

"Can you find a way to get this money out? At present, on the one hand, many industries in China are short of money, but there are a lot of funds precipitated by the people, especially in rural areas, and the first thing that many soldiers who went abroad to fight in the war did when they came back was to repair cellars and save silver. Where did you learn this bad habit, I don't like to deposit in the bank to get interest but go to the cellar, it's ridiculous! Qiang Quansheng said a little depressedly, "In 50 and 51, we concentrated on redeeming a large number of acceptance bills issued for the construction of railways in previous years, which consumed a lot of cash reserves, but the problem is that the money that was exchanged for huàn gradually precipitated in the private sector and did not flow to the industries that needed it, which is really a headache." The momentum of inflation has just been somewhat contained, is it possible that we will issue new commercial paper again? ”

"Do more publicity, do more ideological work, and raise the deposit interest rate, which can probably attract some precipitated funds, but you can't expect too much, I estimate that more than 2 million will reach the sky." Zhou Shenwo took a puff of his cigarette and said with a solemn face: "But two million is two million, and it can also build a small 200-kilometer railway, or build two medium-sized ports, or renovate the sewer network and sewage treatment facilities in forty or fifty settlements, and it is still quite useful." ”

In fact, there is another meaning of Zhou Shenwo's words, that is, if all the 12 million funds are really circulated in the market, then the economy of the east coast will not collapse on the spot, and at that time, if there is no rationing system or price control, inflation will rise to the sky. However, there is some truth to Qiang's demand, and how to convince the owners of these funds to deposit their money in the bank instead of in their own cellar is indeed a very meaningful work. After all, it is much more useful to concentrate the control of money from the hands of scattered individuals to the state, because only the state can make money a more meaningful "trip".

"Fortunately, the amount of money put in the market must be well controlled, otherwise it may cause relatively strict economic problems, which requires us to pay attention to the weighted price index table of a basket of commodities at any time, and the Mei organ has a long way to go in this regard." Speaking of this, Qiang Quansheng nodded at one of the Mei organ section chiefs attending the meeting, and then continued: "As for the structural money shortage in the market now, I think it's still the old way, inject liquidity to solve it. ”

"Minister, this is naturally necessary to inject new liquidity into the market, but in what way do we?" Zhou Shenwo asked, perhaps because he felt that his words were not clear, so he explained: "I mean to continue to print new acceptance bills, or to use the gold stored in the No. 1 Army Prison (the Tieling Gold Mine is currently about 1.5 tons, about 750,000 yuan, of course, if it is actually minted into currency, it must be more than 750,000 yuan)?" What is the quota? ”

"No, no new acceptance bills will be printed this time, and some other commercial papers will no longer be printed. In the past, there were too many varieties of bills, too messy, and the printing was very crude, which caused a lot of problems, so this time the ministry decided to merge all the bills into one, and that was the new treasury bills. Treasury bills will be secured by state revenues, reserve gold in the treasury of the First Army Prison and the Commercial Clearing Bank, and the principal and interest will be repaid at maturity. The minimum term is one year, the maximum term is five years, bearer, and it can be transferred by itself without endorsement. Qiang Quansheng said a long paragraph in one breath, and then saw him take a sip of tea to moisten his throat, and continued: "The quota is tentatively set at 500,000 yuan!" This has injected 500,000 yuan of liquidity into the market, and if it is put into construction, it will be able to drive at least three or four million projects, and the pace of national construction will make great strides forward. It's just that, alas, the inflation that has just been curbed by the concentrated exchange of a batch of maturing bills is about to raise its head again, what a headache! There are so many large-scale infrastructure projects in China, and it is not easy to recover currency! ”

The attendees nodded approvingly, for as an economy that has been developing rapidly for many years, no matter how hard the East Coast government tries and how many measures it takes, the country's inflation has never been able to contain it. The weighted price index of a basket of commodities counted by the Mei organ every month has risen year-on-year and month-on-month, which is really helpless to the extreme, so much so that a while ago, the Government Council ordered a large increase in the minimum wage to 6.5 yuan (the average wage, bonus and benefits have long exceeded 8.5 yuan) to cope with the purchasing power of the people's wages becoming less and less.

However, raising wages is also a double-edged sword, because it will increase the cost of labor in the East Coast and reduce the competitiveness of East Coast goods, but in today's environment, what can be done? As long as we continue to immigrate and continue to build infrastructure, then we will inevitably endure long-term inflation. As for the domestic business owners on the East Coast, they can only adapt to this unfavorable environment and constantly seek ways to reduce costs - such as bringing in low-wage migrant laborers, such as improving the mechanized production process of their products, such as obtaining cheaper raw materials, such as obtaining the dumping market for goods that they can enjoy exclusively, and so on.

Governing a large country is like cooking a small meal, and the rulers on the east coast have really realized this sentence more profoundly, and it is so troublesome to govern a small country with a population of less than 300,000, if the population grows to 500,000 or 1 million in the future, and the scale of industry and agriculture expands to 10 or 20 times the size of today, will they still be competent? (To be continued)