Fox of France

To be honest, after the peace agreement was reached, at the request of the French, Britain began to carry out comprehensive reforms of its domestic political economy. The first is to rectify the chaotic financial order in the country.

Obviously, today's sterling notes are completely discredited, they cannot be exchanged for gold, and in this age of the gold standard, a currency that cannot be exchanged for gold is useless paper.

Therefore, the first major thing to rectify the financial order in the UK is to rectify the pound. According to the value of British pound gold coins to exchange for one-to-one paper currency pounds? How is that possible? Not to mention that the British don't have that much gold, even the French, and even the whole of Europe don't have that much gold, and if they really want to exchange it in this way, then who is the victor?

So the French proposed such a plan. According to this plan, the British government deposited all its gold reserves in the Bank of Rome and entrusted the Bank of Rome to issue new pounds. The new British pound will be exchanged for British pound notes at a ratio of one to one hundred thousand. At the same time, the old sterling, including the old sterling gold coins, will be gradually withdrawn from circulation.

In order to ensure the value of the new pound, the new pound will, will be tied to the franc, not to gold. The new pound cannot be directly exchanged for gold, but it can be exchanged for francs according to a fixed ratio (of course, there is a handling fee) and then they can take the francs and exchange them for the corresponding gold at the Bank of Rome.

Why not convert the new pound directly into gold, but turn the corner through the franc? This is of course to avoid a massive run on gold.

First of all, you need to know that Bank of Rome is different from ordinary banks. Its main customers are not ordinary people, or even ordinary enterprises, but important commercial banks in various countries.

This has resulted in the fact that Roman Bank has very few outlets in various countries. In addition, because the number of outlets is limited, to exchange francs for gold, you need to make an appointment in advance, and you have to queue up. In this way, the amount of exchange cannot be too large.

On the other hand, the franc cannot be used directly in the UK. (Of course, many British companies are willing to accept franc banknotes directly.) Although the franc has a high reputation, it is still inconvenient to use. And there is a handling fee for the exchange, and it is not low. (Of course, if you go to France to exchange by yourself, there is no handling fee, but doesn’t that also require travel expenses?) Since it can be exchanged at any time, and it is all banknotes for banknotes, the willingness of ordinary people to exchange will also decline.

The binding of the new pound to the franc can also improve the confidence of the British people in the new pound.

Of course, the Bank of Rome is not doing charity, and the benefits of obtaining the right to issue new pounds are not small. And the British gold reserves are deposited in his treasury, which is even more beneficial. Although after the war, Britain's gold reserves are actually running out, but the credit benefits obtained just because of this are not small.

With the issuance of the new pound sterling, financial order in the UK began to be restored. However, the situation of the British has undergone a strange change.

First of all, because of the complete opening of capital and markets, British companies have generally suffered a huge impact. Especially for some small and medium-sized enterprises, they had difficulty in operating during the war. After the war, they directly faced the impact of European industries, so a large number of enterprises began to go bankrupt.

Compared with small and medium-sized enterprises, large enterprises are also more resistant to shocks, but large enterprises are also the focus of the French's priority attack, especially those heavy industrial enterprises, which are often closely related to the British army. Now that the British army is downsizing, they The future is equally difficult. Fortunately, most of these enterprises still have the value of being harvested, so they can also be reborn through capital reorganization. Of course, the result of capital reorganization is often that although the company still has the old name, the boss may have been replaced by a Frenchman. Or the name of the company is still the same, and the boss who manages the company is still the same boss, but the majority shareholder of the company has become French. The boss on the surface may have only 100% of the company. How many days. This is like after the Southeast Asian financial crisis in later generations, the lighthouse country used the IMF, the World Bank and other things to harvest large companies in the universe country.

According to general reasoning, such an impact will definitely starve the workers at the bottom of the UK - because the factories and so on went bankrupt and closed down for rectification. In economic life, the risks borne by workers and capitalists are not the same. Once the economic situation is not good, the risk that workers have to take is that they may starve to death; while the risk that capitalists have to take is to lose money, and capital The stronger the capitalist, the smaller the loss will actually be. It is even possible that not only did not lose, but also earned a lot. This is what Morgan said, "When the crisis comes, the truly valuable stocks will return to their real owners."

Of course, in comparison, capitalists naturally take greater risks. After all, workers only lose their lives, while capitalists lose their money.

But in the UK, the situation has changed a bit, because British workers have found another way to make money, which is to go out and work for the French.

Today, between Britain and France, capital and people are free to flow. So British workers can also go to work in France. British workers are better trained, more efficient, and less demanding of wages than those of the Germans. So the French were also happy to employ these British workers. Even business owners in other European countries, not just the French, generally like British workers very much. As a result of market optimization, those companies in the UK that are still struggling to support suddenly find that there is a labor shortage in the UK, and they can't recruit enough workers.

The situation was almost devastating to British industry. In fact, this is true for the whole of Europe. Workers are attracted by France, which is more industrially developed, and funds, no matter which country the funds are from, actually automatically flow to France. As a result, the two pillars used to support industrialization, labor and capital, began to move away from Britain.

But in England, the old medieval life seems to be revived again, the hustle and bustle of capital and industry began to leave them, and the cities and countryside became simple and quiet again. Perhaps the poets of the lakeside school would prefer this England.

The only fly in the ointment is that in Britain, there are fewer young people, especially in those villages, you can hardly see a young person. There were only aging old people there, and sometimes underage children, whose parents were absent. For these children, their parents are like Santa Claus, who only suddenly appears in front of them around Christmas and brings them various small gifts. Then, as soon as Christmas was over, they disappeared with them.

Of course, maybe one day, their parents will suddenly appear in front of them and tell them: "We are moving, to a far away place to live a better life." Then the family will leave the village, take a boat, left Europe.

North America is not where the majority of Brits go. The French did not wish to send more Britons to North America. Over the years, Napoleon has adopted a policy of encouraging births in his native land. One of the important purposes is to ensure that in Louisiana, the number of French-speaking French is more than that of German-speaking French.

Therefore, the route of most British immigrants is India or Africa and South America.

"India is a good place. Especially the culture there is very good." When talking about India, Joseph said.

"Really?" Napoleon didn't know much about Indian culture.

"What a fart! You don't know what Joseph will say in that mouth?" Lucien said that Napoleon was too young and naive.

"Indian culture divides people into many levels naturally, and they used a magical invention to explain all the inequality in this world." Joseph continued, "Napoleon, in the face of inequality in the world, What did the Catholic Church do when the problem was raised?"

Napoleon thought for a while and replied: "First of all, he thinks that all people are equal in soul. As long as they have a devout faith, they can go to heaven to appease people; then they say that people have original sin, so suffering is right; Life in the world is not the purpose of life, but going to heaven is, so that people will no longer pay attention to the real pain; finally, let’s beautify the suffering and give a saying that it is easier for the poor to go to heaven, as long as they endure the pain piously. I think The reason why Catholicism can replace Roman polytheism is because Roman polytheism is too concerned with the gains and losses of reality-this is not good for those who are in the upper class."

"In this issue, the Indians are one step closer." Joseph laughed. "The Indians replaced heaven and original sin with reincarnation. They believe that after a person dies, the soul will be reincarnated into a new child or newborn Animals. And how you will be treated in the new life cycle depends on your behavior in the previous cycle. Well, this is really a great invention. In this way, if someone complains, why do I go from morning till night People who work hard, but can't even eat enough? And those who do nothing, can live a life of luxury?

Napoleon, you know, in France, when someone asks a question like that, revolution is just around the corner. But in India it is different. If an Indian asks such a question, others will tell him that it is because you did too many bad things in your previous life, so you have to pay for the crimes of the previous life in this life. So - what happened in the last life cannot be verified or falsified, but with such a set of arguments, it can be used to justify all the inequality and even all the evils in the world.

Indians have accepted this idea, so they can endure all kinds of oppression and bullying that are unbelievable and intolerable to us. So I say, Indian culture, for those who are at the top, it is wonderful.

However, this kind of culture also brings a small trouble, that is, he tends to make people not enterprising. Because in their view, no matter what kind of state it is, it is determined by the good or bad things done in the previous life, so people in lower positions do not want to resist, so naturally they have no intention of being aggressive. As for the people at the top, well, anyway, life is easier and there is no threat, so naturally they can be as lazy as they want. So India is always easy to conquer. "

"You speak so well about India, I want to be the king of India." Napoleon said sarcastically.

"If there are no other countries in the world, then being the king of India is really a very good thing." Lucien said half-seriously.

"India is a place where people can be turned into waste. So although we can search India now, I don't want the French to immigrate there in large numbers, it will make a lot of waste." Joseph said .

"So you think that if you send all the British there, you don't have to worry about them creating a new Britain?" Napoleon said.

"In North America, if we don't intervene, the United States may indeed become a new Britain. But in India, they will soon find out the benefits of India, and then they will all become the new Kshatriyas."

"So let the British go to India and end up as trash?"

"Yes, anyway, when they are ready to immigrate, they will no longer be our employees." Joseph replied, "But for India, we still have to intervene, and we want to urge countries to respect Indian traditions. , especially the tradition of land and state, avoid integrating it, and don’t let it change from a geographical concept and a cultural concept to a nation-state concept in the end.”

"Well, in this way, the British will completely have no threat to us." Napoleon said, "Now looking around, there is no power in the whole of Europe that can challenge France. We can finally say that France is invincible! Moreover, now in The land under French control spreads all over the earth, when the sun sets from one sphere of our influence, it also rises on another sphere of our influence at the same time. The new, invincible, millennium empire where the sun never sets Already on the horizon..."

Napoleon was expressing emotion, but suddenly saw Joseph couldn't help laughing.

"What's the matter, Joseph? Did I say something wrong?" asked Napoleon.

"Ah, Napoleon, I want to ask, what does the horizon mean?" Joseph replied, holding back a smile.

"You don't know what this word means? The horizon is a line that you will never reach no matter how you go." Lucien also laughed loudly.