Chapter 657

After hearing Lü Daqi’s solution to their dilemma, the merchants kept their heads lowered, thinking rapidly. They were weighing the risks. The true owner of the Great Ming Bank was Emperor Chongzhen himself. Theoretically, the more powerful the backing of a bank, the safer the capital. However, funds faced two types of risks. One was external—theft or robbery; the other was internal—embezzlement by the bank itself. The method for a bank to embezzle a merchant’s money was simple: if a merchant deposited ten thousand taels of silver at a Shaanxi bank, the bank would issue the merchant ten thousand taels in silver notes. According to standard procedure, a merchant could take these notes to any Great Ming Bank in the country and exchange them for ten thousand taels of silver. But if the Shaanxi bank issued fraudulent notes, those ten thousand taels would be lost forever. How could they recover it? The Shaanxi bank would certainly never admit to embezzling the merchant's money; instead, they would claim the notes issued were genuine and plead ignorance regarding any fraud. If money were stolen by any other bank, the merchant would still have a chance at justice as long as the law remained intact. Law is the public instrument of the world! Any county, prefecture, province, the Ministry of Punishments, the Censorate, or the Court of Judicial Review could hear the case; if all else failed, one could beat the Petition Drum to appeal directly to the Emperor.