Night, as silent as death.

Guangnan West Road, Wuzhou City.

Zhong Xiang looked at the copper coins that were carried in front of him and were scattered and broken, and then looked at the soldiers who were beaten and swollen in front of him, and he was so angry that he didn't know what to say for a while.

Seeing his appearance, the chief military officer of the second town of Jin Cong and Zhong Xiang broke the silence in the room after a moment when he spoke: "Marshal, that Liu Xing has been premeditated for a long time, and his Tiance Guard is also a group of ghostly characters. Those people robbed the personnel and utensils of Yuanfeng Jian and other places before the arrival of our army, I am afraid that they want to deliberately make Guangnan West Road have another money shortage, and I hope that the marshal will think about it as soon as possible! ”

The Song Dynasty was a dynasty in history that often had a "money shortage". During the Qingli period of the Song Renzong Dynasty, there was a "money shortage" in Jianghuai, and during the Xining period of the Shenzong Dynasty, there was a great shortage of spring goods (currency), and during the Yuanyou period of Zhezong, "Zhejiang has been known as a money shortage, especially today."

What is the reason for this dilemma? There are probably three points: First, the massive outflow of copper coins has caused a "money shortage".

The Great Song Dynasty had a developed economy and carried out close international trade with Dongying, Goryeo, the South China Sea countries, the western countries of Persia and even some countries further afield, and the Song money almost became the international currency of this trade area, and it was the absolute dominant currency.

Not only did Dongying and Goryeo "stop at the copper coins of those who are cool", but the transactions between Jiaozhi and the Song people "must be made with small flat coins; and ordered the country that the small flat money is allowed to enter but not to go out"; The state of Java also exchanged pepper for Song money, and some countries as far away, such as Tianzhu and Persia, now have Song money in circulation.

These countries that traded with the Song Dynasty "got Chinese money, stored it in separate warehouses, and thought it was the treasure of the town." Therefore, those who enter Tibet do not go to Tibet unless they have copper coins, and they do not sell their goods without copper coins."

So in the previous dynasties, when there was a money shortage, it was proposed to close the trading port altogether. Interrupt trade with foreign businessmen, believing that this is the way to "pull out the source".

This was of course a very stupid idea, but fortunately the emperors before the Great Song Dynasty did not listen to it. Zhong Xiang knew very well that the "money shortage" in the Great Song Dynasty was not due to the shortage of copper coins, in other words, the outflow of copper coins may have an impact on the "money shortage", but it cannot be said to be the culprit that led to the "money shortage". Because the total amount of money put into the market in the Great Song Dynasty was very large.

The second reason is that a large part of the money sent out by the Great Song Dynasty has "precipitated", which is replaced by the recent Liu Xingxing's statement: "The 'money shortage' is not because there is no money, but because the money does not appear in the right place."

A large number of copper coins, lying down in a place with very low liquidity, did not move.

The "copper coin precipitation" here includes the monetization tax of the yamen at all levels and the division to return a large number of coins, as well as the people's savings atmosphere.

Because the rich families in the Great Song Dynasty had the habit of accumulating copper coins, the money hidden in the treasury was called "town treasury money", such as Qingzhou Minma's. "His rich third generation, since his ancestors with 100,000 yuan of money in the town treasury, but did not use it."

Because copper coins retain their value. The Northern Song Dynasty issued banknotes, and that kind of banknotes were called Jiaozi.

However, as a credit currency, paper money will depreciate rapidly if the country over-issued, and Song Huizong's Jiaozi at that time depreciated sharply. So much so that the people no longer dared to believe in the paper money, but only flocked to the copper money. Coins were stored in large quantities, resulting in a shortage of money in circulation.

The third reason is the recurring "money shortage". The countermeasures adopted by the yamen at all levels in the Great Song Dynasty were to implement the "money ban", that is, to strictly prohibit merchants from carrying copper coins out of the country for trade. It is forbidden for the private sector to destroy money casters.

This line of thinking seems to be the right medicine, but in fact it does not stand the test of economics. The "money shortage" of the Great Song Dynasty was not due to the insufficient supply of the total amount of money, but the "illusion of shortage" in the process of monetary circulation.

Liu Xing had publicly stated his opinions before. Liu Xing believes that in the free market, if the supply of copper money exceeds demand, the purchasing power of money will be lower than the value of copper itself. Once this is the case, the market will drive people to melt copper coins into copper utensils, so that the circulation of copper coins in the market will decrease, and the value of the currency will rise;

Suppose copper coins are in short supply. The market will also encourage "money supervisors" to mint money and attract coins from private storage to flow back to the market. In this way, a dynamic balance will be maintained between the market flow of copper coins and the market demand......

Because he realized that the money shortage would come at any time, although the dragon coin had already begun to be implemented, Liu Xing's approach was also extremely cautious. It was first launched in the Guanzhong area, and then expanded to Shanxi, Henan, and Shanxi provinces, where the economic environment is more stable and the market demand for currency circulation is large.

The demand for currency circulation is large, and the people do not have much opportunity to hoard dragon coins for savings, so they can only turn money into grain and salt for private storage.

While stimulating the market and forcibly guiding the circulation of currency, Liu Xing also deliberately issued a dead order to the guards of the local fields and border gates: When all foreign merchants leave the country, they are only allowed to bring "bills of exchange" with the silver numbers of each bank. Anyone who carries cash without permission will have the dragon coins confiscated and will be fined 10 times.

Liu Xing's meaning is obvious: I welcome you to come to my Great Song Dynasty to do business, and I also support the use of our dragon coins in my court. But when you leave, you want to take away the dragon coins that I have so hard to mint, then I will punish you to death after I catch them.

In order to prevent the outflow of currency, Zhao Ding was also very desperate, and even ordered the household departments in various localities to set up tax supervisors with a total number of 240,000 people. It is said that it is a tax supervision and tax inspection, but in fact? More often than not, those tax supervisors wandered around the yards, strictly checking the private collections and hidden dragon coins of foreign merchants.

In order to avoid corruption, Zhao Ding also proposed to Liu Xing and introduced a set of special incentives for those tax supervisors: the confiscated principal will be returned to him, and a fine of 20% will be used as a bonus. There must be brave men under the heavy reward, and it is naturally difficult for today's dragon coins to go abroad.

The reason why Liu Xing dared to do this, of course, was not to take the risk of smashing his own trade market and only not being able to find a shortage of money. That's because Liu Xing had already discussed with Zhao Ding, and pushed the four major officials, superintendents, merchants, and merchants and the Great Song Dynasty royal silver account personally run by the imperial court to nearby neighboring countries to open branches.

In less than a year, the current five silver horns have started business in Goryeo, Tubo, Tianzhu and Dongying. While absorbing savings and lending there, while seizing gold and silver from there, and transporting them back to the Great Song Dynasty, they were minted into new dragon coins and put them into the market, which has gradually formed a virtuous circle......

Among the dynasties, it seems that only the Great Song Dynasty had frequent money shortages, which made Zhong Xiang realize that if he wanted to be self-reliant, he had to learn from Liu Xing and first grasp the money bag. It's a pity that he didn't have Liu Xing's foresight.

He thought that as long as he laid down these coinage prisons on Guangnan West Road, he could get a large amount of money and a large number of coinage vessels, and then mint dragon coins by himself to strengthen his finances.

The result? He had just knocked down the Yuanfeng Prison, and a group of people wearing flying fish suits rushed in. After beating his own soldiers, he didn't even know where to grab the utensils. (To be continued.) )