Chapter 1026 IMF Past and Present

Chapter 1026 IMF Past and Present

In the era of colonialism, the great powers fought openly, and finance was the supporter of war and piracy, as well as the sharer of plunder.

In the era of industrial capitalism, in order to pursue the excess profits brought about by trade, currency and finance are tools for exporting commodities, and the competition for currency status and financial status among the great powers is also to obtain commodity benefits.

In the era of financial capitalism, the pursuit of trade interests has turned into the pursuit of excess seigniorage interests. Powerful currencies use their absolute advantage to not only profit from the possession of resources, commodities, and labor in other countries, but also profit from the rise and fall of global financial prices. , and profit from the process of crushing a country's economy at every turn.

When it comes to wealth robbery, people are very likely to think of pirates, including gentleman pirates and royal pirates.

Europeans usually refer to pirates supported by a certain country’s government or royal family as royal pirates or gentleman pirates. During the period of great voyages, based on the discovery of the New World and the expansion of colonies, all kinds of gold and goods were sailing on the oceans of the world. ships, so sea plundering became a profession.

This was originally a criminal act of a gang of private robbers, but in order to strengthen navigation technology and expand colonies, the old European empire deliberately raised pirates and even legalized them.

The most typical case is the British Royal Pirates, and the most famous person is probably the great British navigator Francis Drake. In 1577 and 1580, Drake circumnavigated the earth twice, and in April 1581, he was awarded the title of Royal Knight by Queen Elizabeth I himself on board.

However, the hero in the minds of the British and the Hawkins fleet he commanded were actually a gang of pirates chartered by the British royal family. He turned every pound invested by the British royal family into a profit of 47 pounds.

In Europe in the 16th century, Spain was the backbone of Catholicism and the hegemony of the world, while Britain was insignificant. However, during this period, the religious revolution was surging, reversing the political structure of the whole of Europe. Henry VIII of England founded the Church of England and broke away from the Holy See. Britain became one of the earliest Protestant countries.

After Queen Elizabeth I came to power, she consolidated the status of Protestantism internally, supported the independence of Protestant countries such as the Netherlands externally, and tried to turn Britain into a Protestant empire, so the conflict between Britain and Spain became more and more intense.

Economically, Spain and Portugal made huge colonial fortunes, which also made Britain jealous. But as early as 1496, King Henry VII of England also hired the Venetian navigator Capote to search for the New World. He traveled all over Newfoundland, Hudson Bay and Virginia in North America, and Guyana in South America, but failed to find it. Gold and silver treasures are lost again and again.

A large amount of investment has lost everything, how can this be reconciled, since I can't find it, I will rob the merchant ship that returned with a full load.

From 1585 to 1604, the British built armed merchant ships and sailed nearly 200 times a year to plunder Spanish transport fleets in the Atlantic and Caribbean Seas, with an average of about 200,000 pounds of property captured each year. This was a considerable amount of income at the time, and in order to expand the results of the war, Elizabeth I had the idea of ​​pirates and issued a privateer license to the fleet led by Hawkins and Drake who hated Spain, authorizing the fleet to legally rob Merchant ships of other countries.

Thanks to the support of the British royal family, Drake began to drive an armed merchant ship in 1572, and became the "black pearl" that terrified the Spaniards in the Caribbean at that time. At the same time, he also became a well-known legend in the UK, plundering countless wealth for the UK. .

In 1577, Drake received a message that the Cacafogo, a Spanish transport ship full of gold and silver treasures, was sailing from Peru to Panama City. Therefore, Drake set up an ambush off the coast of Panama, and on March 3, 1579, captured the Cacafogo, which had come all the way, and robbed 80 pounds of gold, 20 tons of silver, 13 boxes of silver coins, and many pearls and gems at one time.

In addition, Drake used the nautical charts obtained from the robbery of the Kakafogo, traveled westward across the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and returned to Britain more than a year later, becoming the first British to sail around the earth.

On September 26, 1580, the Drake fleet sailed into Plymouth Harbor full of treasures and received a grand welcome. Queen Elizabeth I boarded the flagship of the Hawkins fleet, the Golden Hind, to honor Drake and appoint him mayor of Plymouth.

Drake Mingli showed the piracy of killing and looting goods, but behind it was hidden a rudimentary financial behavior.

In the period of great voyages, whether it is ocean-going trade or piracy relying on force, there must be strong capital support behind it, and behind the pirate ship (armed merchant ship) there is the shadow of joint-stock financing and venture capital.

Drake can be regarded as an entrepreneur. In the early days of his business, he only had an armed merchant ship. After going to sea to rob once, someone found him and wanted to invest in him. Drake's single sail became a double entry right.

After two or three perfect "business" completions, Drake ushered in more investors to invest in the A and B rounds, and he was able to build the Drake fleet. And as the "business" of Drake's fleet grows bigger and bigger, the harvest of each return voyage is also increasing.

But it takes two or three years to go to sea once, and at that time the risk of sailing at sea was huge, and it was common for merchant ships to be buried in the sea, which meant that huge profits came with huge risks. After one or two sweet spots, you can accept it when you see it, and sell the "shares" in your hand to others, that is, the shares are cashed out. The person who takes over the shares may make a lot of money, or they may lose everything.

The period of great voyages was accompanied and connected with the period of colonization at the same time. In order to colonize a piece of land, the colonists would use financial weapons in addition to knives, guns and sticks.

In 1840, before the outbreak of the First Opium War, there were two kinds of currencies in circulation in the commodity market in the Manchu and Qing Dynasties. Large transactions and official transactions used silver in units of two, while common people and small businesses used copper coins for settlement.

At the same time, there is a fixed ratio between silver and copper coins. However, due to various economic and monetary reasons, and because officials at all levels borrowed heavily from copper coins to devalue silver for profit, financial conflicts have become very prominent, and the problem of expensive silver and cheap money has long existed.

On the one hand, the vast majority of ordinary people could not afford to exchange for silver, and could not rely heavily on silver to preserve their wealth; The inability to provide a stable source of silver made the source of official silver heavily dependent on the market, and had to rely on official copper coins to be exchanged in the market.

Under such a premise, the market credit of copper coins is greatly reduced, which leaves an opportunity for overseas commercial and financial forces.

During the Kangxi period, the Manchu Qing Dynasty had become the main supply base for European countries such as Britain, the Netherlands, and Denmark in terms of tea, silk, and porcelain. Foreign companies such as the British East India Company purchased a large number of commodities in China.

The problem is that Europe and North America have a huge demand for Manchu goods, but Manchu people have little demand for foreign cotton cloth, woolen products, metal products, spices, pepper, and sandalwood imported from abroad. For example, during the 13 years from the 46th to the 58th year of Qianlong, the total value of British goods exported to China was only 16.87 million taels, which was only equivalent to one-sixth of the value of British tea exported by the Qing Dynasty.

Faced with such a huge trade deficit, the United Kingdom resorted to two strategies, the first was to impose high tariffs on tea imports, and the second was to develop addictive special opium, which was organized and large-scale launched against the Qing Dynasty. Special cargo smuggling.

This move reversed the trade pattern in a short period of time. The opium trade led to a large outflow of silver. At this time, the American independence movement led to weak demand for tea and raw silk in the international market. The supply chain of silver in the Qing Dynasty was almost interrupted, and silver was more expensive. , Money is cheaper.

At this time, a peculiar monetary phenomenon appeared. During the five years from 1833 to 1838, Lin Zexu, a national hero who sold cigarettes in Humen, followed up and found that foreign money had flooded many coastal areas such as Guangdong Province, Hujian Province, and Zhejiang Province.

In Jiangsu and Zhejiang, there are many businessmen who specialize in foreign banks to buy the Bank of China, and foreigners deliberately suppress the exchange rate between the Bank of China and the Bank of China. Ting Duo paid 100,000 taels of silver, while the country's foreign trade lost millions of taels of silver due to exchange rate issues.

According to the "Complete Works of Lin Zexu": foreigners "do not buy goods, but only buy silver, and secretly consume it, resulting in the decrease of silver in the mainland for two days and the increase of foreign money."

Foreigners minted a large number of silver coins that were not controlled by the Qing government, and used this to take a large amount of money from the Bank of China. In the Qing Dynasty at that time, the serious wealth outflow had already led to a financial crisis and an economic crisis. This was also an important economic background for Daoguang to make up his mind to send Lin Zexu to ban opium.

Later, when Lin Zexu sold cigarettes in Humen, the British capital saw that it was no longer profitable to use the financial means of exchange rate differences, so they put down their "literary" skills and started their "wu" struggle.

The ridiculous thing is that the British war expenditure in the entire Opium War was obtained through the exchange rate difference, that is to say, the logistics of both sides were taken care of by the Qing government in disguise.

...

During the First World War, the United States declared war on Germany in 1917, but in fact the United States had already been involved in the First World War in 1915.

On August 4, 1914, the day the First World War broke out, US President Wilson immediately declared that the United States maintained a neutral stance. On August 19, he called on the United States to be equally impartial in thought and action.

In January 1915, in order to avoid conflict with the neutral position of the United States, Britain appointed a heavyweight businessman to New York and appointed him as the British commercial representative in the United States. This person was closely related to high-level officials in the United Kingdom and the United States. At that time, J.P. Morgan, a big financier and head of the Morgan consortium, was already very famous internationally.

J.P. Morgan was in New York at the time, so it is not appropriate to say "come", but another person who was in charge of the mediation did come to New York from London, and that person was named Rothschild.

In the United States, J.P. Morgan helped Britain raise war funds through large-scale borrowing with one hand; with the other hand, he used the money raised to purchase large quantities of military supplies in the United States on behalf of the Allied Powers. This kind of business model has made American financiers and industrialists a lot of money.

On August 12, 1915, U.S. Treasury Secretary McAdoo pointed out in a letter to President Wilson that the sale of industrial products to the Allies ushered in an era of great prosperity for the United States, but to make the prosperity last, the United States must Openly lending to the Allies.

On December 8, Wilson officially approved the federal loan. In the following year, the United States provided the Allied Powers with monetary loans and supplies worth tens of billions of dollars.

In January 1917, German submarines once again blocked the sea transportation line between Britain and the United States on a large scale, and claimed victory in the war within six months. If this lifeline of the war was severed and Germany won the war, the tens of billions of US debts owed to the Allied Powers would be wiped out.

In desperation, on April 6, 1917, the United States was forced to formally declare war on Germany. Yes, it was forced. Not only speak harsh words, but also destroy the "good brothers". Can Mei·Jingkun·National be less angry?

Not to mention, hack it to death.

During the five years of World War I, the total industrial output value of the United States increased from less than 25 billion US dollars to 64 billion US dollars, an increase of 156.7%; the number of American millionaires increased by 17,000. Mellon, the then U.S. treasury secretary, admitted that the profit margin obtained by the U.S. from war deals was as high as 80%.

In addition, when Europe was unable to take care of the Latin American and Far East markets, the U.S. trade with Latin America expanded from less than 80 million U.S. dollars to 3.4 billion U.S. dollars; coffee; the output of American private capital to the Far East market increased from $3.5 billion to $7 billion.

More importantly, gold flowed from Europe to the United States. In 1919, the gold reserves of the United States were equivalent to 40% of the total gold reserves of all countries in the world. With the help of war proceeds, more than 2 billion US dollars of American debts were redeemed from foreign investors. From a debtor country to a creditor country.

As the US ambassador to Britain, Page, predicted in a letter to US Presidential Advisor House on October 11, 1914: "After the war, almost all European countries will be on the verge of bankruptcy, and there will be no more Germany on the sea. 10 years In the future, the future of the whole world will fall into our hands, which is a very rare opportunity."

It can be said that the reason why the United States was involved in World War I was completely led by capital. In other words, "Bank of America" ​​faced the increasingly corrupt "British companies" that were suspected of being corrupt and collapsed, because of the loans they issued. Considering that, he had to send "business elites" to help him turn losses into profits.

With the help of the Bank of America, the British company and the French company joined hands to snatch the market of the German company. German company "Versailles".

There are many overlaps between French companies and German companies in the market. Taking advantage of the opportunity of a big victory, French companies really want to completely kill German companies and become the hegemony in the European market.

The British company doesn't think so. Its main competitor is the French company. If it weren't for the German company clamoring to annex their two markets, the British company would like to see the other two dogs eat dogs, so it doesn't want to see Germany The company is in ruins, and it is best to keep the French company in check forever by half-death.

Moreover, the British company still wants the German company to "Versailles", and it also counts on the German company to help it repay the loan from the American bank.

The German company was defeated. Not only has the working capital been exhausted, but it is also burdened with a huge "Versailles".

The idea of ​​the German company, the French company agreed, the British company did not agree, and the Bank of America did not agree. If the German company failed, the loan might become bad again. After thinking about it, the Bank of America concocted a package of Dawes repayment plan.

The so-called Dawes Plan simply means that international financial institutions led by the United Kingdom and the United States provide loans to German companies to help German companies recover their economies and enable them to obtain the ability to pay war reparations; German companies pay war reparations in five years, and the final deadline for September 1, 1929.

For the smooth implementation of the Dawes plan, the Anglo-American Bank set up an office in Berlin and appointed Parker Gilbert, a partner of the Morgan Consortium, as the general agent for compensation, with full authority to manage financial businesses related to compensation.

As a result, the Anglo-American Bank lent money to the German company, and Gilbert would immediately turn the money into war reparations and return it to the British and French companies; the British and French companies then used part of it to repay debts to the American bank, and the other part was used to import American products. commodity.

At the same time, in order to maintain the smooth implementation of the Dawes plan, the Federal Reserve kept the US market interest rates very low, which greatly increased the attractiveness of high-interest German corporate bonds, thereby ensuring a continuous flow of US private loans to German companies.

On the surface, the Dawes Plan restored the British and French economies, and also enabled the American manufacturing industry to obtain orders from Europe, while at the same time creating financial prosperity. However, this all stems from the continuous increase in the scale of German debt, which is bound to plant the seeds for future crises.

In 1925, Britain, which was supposed to restore its economy with all its strength, was very anxious to save the declining status of the pound. Its Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill, was running around trying to re-establish the strong pre-war status of the pound on the gold standard, and the fixed exchange rate of 1 pound to 4.86 US dollars.

Under his strong persuasion, the exchange rate between the Anglo-American currency was fixed at 1:4.86. However, putting the exchange rate of 1 to 4.86 before the war into the post-war period, according to the comparison of the economic strengths of Britain and the United States at that time, it means that the value of the pound was seriously overvalued, so it became difficult for Britain to export, and the British were more inclined to hold dollars , so that a large amount of European gold flowed to the United States.

Norman, governor of the Bank of England, could not bear such a situation, but he was powerless to persuade Churchill to allow the devaluation of the pound and abandon the gold standard.

In the spring of 1927, Norman came to the United States together with the central bankers of France and Germany, trying to persuade the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates and prevent further gold flow to the United States. The Fed caved in and cut the federal benchmark interest rate from 4% to 3.5%.

This interest rate cut was later regarded by many economists as "one of the most stupid actions in the history of the Federal Reserve", and Herbert Hoover, who was elected the 31st President of the United States a year later, defined this interest rate cut as "Operation Treason".

Stimulated by low interest rates, the U.S. economy is booming.

On December 4, 1928, Coolidge, the 30th President of the United States, delivered his last State of the Union address. He told members of Congress: The United States is experiencing an unprecedented and encouraging era of prosperity.

Although Coolidge's optimism was criticized by a whole generation of economists, it is objective to say that the U.S. economy did grow by leaps and bounds in the five years from 1924 to 1929.

In 1924, owning a radio was still a novelty in the United States, but by 1929, more than 10 million households in the United States had at least one radio.

During this period, the United States invented consumer credit, and the annual output of automobiles increased from 2.9 million in 1924 to more than 5.3 million in 1929; The value of GDP also increased from US$60.8 billion to US$68 billion, while GNP per capita increased by 25%.

Of course, at the same time, we can see the Wall Street stock index, the 25 industrial stock price index rose from 106 points at the end of May 1924 to 378 points on October 21, 1929.

In the second half of 1928, the White House had noticed the crazy speculation that the stock market and the credit market promoted each other, but because of its commitment to Britain, France, and Germany, the Fed dared not give up the low interest rate policy easily.

On February 7, 1929, when the United States was still considering whether to raise interest rates to curb market speculation, Britain took the lead. On this day, without the knowledge of the United States, the Bank of England unilaterally raised the bank discount rate from 4.5% to 5.5%.

This move suddenly changed the direction of capital flow, and a large number of investors began to exchange US dollars for gold and then remit them to London; this move instantly caused the liquidity of US dollars in the market to shrink, so the Wall Street stock market could not stand it.

On February 14, 1929, the Federal Reserve held an emergency meeting to discuss whether the Federal Reserve Bank of New York should increase the rediscount rate from 5% to 6% in order to prevent the sharp decline in gold reserves, but the meeting ended without result. The reason is that the participants believed that raising interest rates would depress the stock market and depress the domestic manufacturing industry.

On the afternoon of March 26, 1929, when Wall Street's short-term lending rate climbed to an unprecedented 20% and the U.S. financial market experienced a serious shortage of funds, Norman, the governor of the Bank of England, appeared in the United States again, but this time he came to demand that New York The Federal Reserve Bank raises interest rates immediately.

On August 9, when the New York Fed raised the discount rate from 5% to 6%, Wall Street began to crash. On October 24, 1929, the Wall Street stock market crashed, and British Finance Minister Winston Churchill happened to be standing on the stands of the New York Stock Exchange. He witnessed what happened that day, and sighed to the pheasant in his mouth like a weasel: "My God, what a poor American."

The picture of Churchill at the New York Stock Exchange is true. As for the sigh, it was made up by Nanyi after reading the information, but it was not something he thought of casually.

In the past two years, the United Kingdom has forced the United States to cut interest rates, inflated the U.S. economic bubble, and then forced the United States to raise interest rates to puncture the U.S. economic bubble.

If this guess is true, Nanyi's brain supplement can be regarded as meaningful.

The Great Depression of the United States in 1929 did suppress the rising trend of the United States' international status, but at the same time, a chain reaction occurred, and Pandora's box was opened.

According to the Dawes plan, Germany’s war reparations became short-term foreign debts of 18.5 billion Reichsmarks, and the Great Depression in the United States also led to the withdrawal of funds from Germany by the Anglo-American banks, forcing Germany to walk on the broken wire rope again.

Although the Dawes plan is a poison pill, Germany's debts are getting more and more repaid, but debt is a very mysterious thing. Some people don't have a penny in debt, but they are so poor that they have no money to eat, and they worry so much that they lose their hair every day. ;Some people carry hundreds of billions of debts, but it has no impact on their lives. They should eat and drink, which is called comfort.

Germany was originally the latter. Although the country was carrying huge debts, the people's life was able to make do with it, and there was no worry about starvation. Originally, if we continued to go on in Andan, World War II might not have happened, but the collapse of the situation did not necessarily start from the inside, it may also come from the outside.

After World War I, the "Versailles Agreement" dismembered the Austro-Hungarian Empire with extremely harsh conditions, cutting off the most valuable economic circulation chain "resource supply" between Austria and Hungary and other Eastern European countries, so that the Austrian industry was in ruins from then on, and there will be no more can recover.

However, the repayment of war indemnities is an indispensable obligation. At this time, the Vienna Credit Bank has become the most powerful financial institution in Austria with the support of giants such as the Morgan Consortium and the Bank of England. The reason why the Anglo-American consortium wants to support the Vienna Credit Bank is to let it play a very special role-acquisition of small and medium-sized Austrian banks and high-quality assets that the Austrian government had to sell to repay debts.

Credit Bank Vienna did not make a profit during this period, but relied on domestic savings and short-term foreign debt to provide cash liquidity to maintain operations, and all the funds required for asset acquisition came from short-term financing from the Anglo-American consortium.

It can be said that the Vienna Credit Bank is just an empty shelf, which will collapse when a breeze blows.

The Great Depression in the United States, the Anglo-American consortia withdrew from the front line of fund shrinkage one after another, and the liquidity of the Vienna Credit Bank was immediately interrupted, but it can still be maintained in the short term.

In the early spring of 1931, Austria and Germany re-formed a trade and customs union taking advantage of Britain and the United States being overwhelmed by themselves, which severely stimulated France's nerves. France believes that the German-Austrian business alliance will inevitably lead to the restart of political and military alliances, thus posing a threat to the security of the European continent.

To put a stop to this alliance, in March 1931 the French ordered a drastic reduction in short-term financing to the Vienna Credit Bank.

Moreover, in order to defeat the German-Austrian alliance, French newspapers released a false news that "The Credit Bank of Vienna is being run on." Unexpectedly, France's move not only caught fire, but also triggered a credit crisis that shocked the entire European and American financial markets.

With the first collapse of the Vienna Credit Bank, the German banking industry began to suffer a comprehensive run. On July 13, 1931, the second largest private bank in Germany, the Darmstadt National Bank, declared bankruptcy. Soon, people began to suspect that Germany could no longer pay war reparations, which caused a wave of runs to France, the United Kingdom, and even the whole of Europe... A credit crisis occurred.

After the crisis in 1929, Hoover actually took many measures to stabilize the U.S. economy. He even asked industrial giants not to lay off workers or cut wages in order to maintain market vitality.

At the end of 1930, the U.S. economy turned around, and the stock market recovered the lost ground in 1929 in March 1931. But at this moment, the European credit crisis suddenly broke out, and well-informed Wall Street bosses sold stocks again frantically.

After 1929, in order to strengthen investor confidence, the Morgan consortium led Wall Street financial institutions to build a "rescue fund" that was actually all liquidated.

The vicious circle of mutual drag between Europe and the United States led to a 4-year global economic depression. In the meantime, there are too many tragic tragedies.

On September 22, 1931, the United Kingdom defaulted on the contract, abandoned the pound gold standard, and abandoned the fixed exchange rate between the pound and the U.S. dollar. At the same time, interest rates were raised again to support a strong pound. Financial institutions in various countries desperately recovered foreign debts. The debt chain of the world was completely broken. The economy got worse.

The German economy completely collapsed and the society fell into chaos. The German public who saw Britain’s dishonesty was also completely angry. The expectations of the French economy have changed, but now, this expectation has been completely shattered, and the Great Depression of the French economy has naturally become a reality.

The United States is also miserable. The economic hope that Hoover worked so hard for has been completely driven into the abyss by the domineering financial behavior of the United Kingdom.

16 million people were unemployed, and millions of people could only live on swill; the price of agricultural products fell sharply, and many farmers killed all their animals and threw them into the mountain stream; In January, the U.S. banking system completely collapsed.

Although the new President Roosevelt launched administrative intervention measures, by March 1933, more than 9,000 banks in the United States were still closed.

What is more unfortunate than the economic disasters in Europe and the United States is that a group of Jews in Germany took the opportunity to initiate a national crisis. Under their operation, German bread rose from 100,000 marks to 500,000 marks, although the bread of 100,000 marks is also the German people They can't afford it, but there are still a small number of upper-middle-class people who can barely support it. When it reaches 100,000 marks, they can't support it.

This group of people is the backbone of German society, and each of them has the "right to speak out".

When the German people were facing the crisis of hunger, an Austrian art student who failed to stand up and took the lead hummed: "I am Lao Lai, I am Lao Lai, I will not pay back the money, I will not pay back the money..."

World War I and the ten years after the war were all related to finance. If it is a bit far-fetched to say that World War I started because of finance, then World War II can be said to be caused by finance. A huge sacrifice, but without a doubt, much more to gain.

While World War II was still going on, some people (Qiu and Luo) were thinking about the reconstruction of Europe after the war, the recovery of the economy, and whether the world would return to the economic melee pattern after World War I.

The answer is naturally no. The disorderly competition for interests in Europe and the United States is the direct and important cause of repeated wars. Therefore, the European and American powers accepted Keynesianism-since the economic activities within a country need to be regulated by the authoritative hand of the government, In dealing with international economic affairs, should there be a super-sovereign force to maintain stability and continuity?

...

If you want to watch the business war, then arrange it. Don’t worry, the story has been there early in the morning, but the original arrangement is just a one-shot. If you want to see it, you can start to write it down. From low to high, arrange a few games, true and false, false and true. , True or false, please judge by yourself.