In a small courtyard, Wang Mingyi and Zhang San sat and discussed the state of the world. Although events had unfolded exactly as they had anticipated, Gao Wencan’s arrest of the storytellers had indeed provided Zhou Tieyi the leverage to launch a backlash against the Empress’s Central Bank. Yet, now that Zhou Tieyi’s countermeasure had been unleashed, neither man felt a shred of triumph; instead, they pondered the situation with grave expressions.
Identifying the problem was simple; solving it was the real challenge. Zhou Tieyi had made his move, suddenly driving up the exchange rate between gold and silver in Tianjing. Both Wang Mingyi and Zhang San knew this was a direct strike at the Daxia banknotes, but for the moment, neither could conceive of a viable solution.
The Imperial Court had only managed to balance its budget last year by relying entirely on the banknotes issued by the Central Bank. Having opened the floodgates to deficit spending, a dependency had naturally formed. Even though neither of them were officials in the Ministry of Revenue, they both knew that the reason the Court had been flush with cash at the start of this year—enough to cover several wars while still having the surplus to promote disaster relief and reforms—was that the central banknotes were being accepted in an ever-wider range of regions.
Chapter 561