Unlike a meddler who fears nothing more than a peaceful world, Franz, as a self-proclaimed pacifist, had always been a staunch opponent of chaos. Watching as the European continent was about to descend into turmoil, Franz knew that as the responsible ruler of the continent, he had to do something. In essence, the current European unrest was caused by the economic crisis. The crisis had been forcibly delayed but with no follow-up plan for releasing the pressure, causing the situation to spin out of control when it finally erupted. Previous economic crises were usually caused by one or two factors, such as flawed economic policies, an imbalance between currency supply and demand, investment bubbles, stock market bubbles, excessive debt, natural disasters, financial storms, or overproduction. This crisis was different. Aside from natural disasters, it had everything else. The consequences were naturally unprecedented. None of the national governments had experience dealing with such a large-scale economic crisis. One by one, they all took a hands-off approach, simply watching as the situation deteriorated to this point. According to the data collected by the Austrian government, after the economic crisis broke out, unemployment rates in every country saw an explosive increase. Although they were all sending immigrants abroad to relieve domestic employment pressure, emigration was not a simple matter. The Holy Roman Empire had a lot of experience with immigration, and they had a large group of noble lords scrambling for people. The “one-stop service” was absolutely on point. It even benefited the entire German-speaking world, with the process being taken care of from start to finish. Other European nations were different. Not every nobleman was a language genius, and they didn’t dare to take on immigrants who didn’t speak their language and culture. Without teams actively recruiting people, immigration was mostly a spontaneous, grassroots effort. Even with government assistance, very few people actually left. What was even more tragic was that most of the people who did leave were from the middle class. Ordinary people couldn’t even afford a boat ticket to the colonies and had to scrape together money from friends and relatives. Given that backdrop, the pace of emigration was naturally slow. If every country were like the Holy Roman Empire, where people came to recruit you as soon as you lost your job, where would the risk of revolution even be? Getting out of an economic crisis wasn’t something that could be done in a short time. Even “using cheats” wouldn’t work and you had to follow the laws of the market’s natural adjustments. Forcing economic stimulation with policies could only solve an immediate problem, and it would leave severe aftereffects. Since you couldn’t solve the problem itself, then you had to solve the people who were causing the problem. While those allied nations seemed to be in deep crisis, the number of people actually causing trouble wasn’t that large. A quick calculation showed that the seven Italian states combined had a population of around fifteen million. Greece had one million, Belgium now had four million, Switzerland had about two million, and Spain had at most eighteen million. All together, that was about forty million people. Based on that population, the number of working-age people was at most twenty million, and the actual number was probably even smaller. Even if the unemployment rate reached twenty percent, that would still only be four million unemployed. The unemployment rate couldn’t get any higher. Besides Belgium, which had a slightly higher degree of industrialization, the rest were agricultural nations. Industrial workers didn’t even make up thirty percent of the total population, so it was impossible for everyone to be unemployed. Even with unemployment, not everyone was facing hardship. The people who were emigrating didn’t need to be managed. The middle class, who had enough savings to get through the economic crisis, didn’t need to be managed either. Considering the reality of the situation, as long as the employment of three million people was solved, social order could be initially stabilized. Franz certainly didn’t have jobs lying around, but that didn’t matter. The Holy Roman Empire’s colonies definitely did. With so many noble lords, even just building their castles, manors, and farms would be enough to create three million jobs. It wasn’t that the noble lords didn’t want to hire foreign labor, the key was the language barrier, which made it impossible to give them instructions. For an individual, this was a major problem, but for a government, it was no big deal. As long as the management was unified, whether they offered language training or provided translators, both were excellent options. The government didn’t even have to step in. A labor dispatch company could handle it. After all, in recent years, a few labor dispatch giants had actually emerged in the Holy Roman Empire. These companies had provided tens of millions of laborers to the Americas, making outstanding contributions to the American economy while accumulating a wealth of experience in labor dispatch. Now that the American route was no longer an option, these firms had redirected their business model from “export to domestic sales,” constantly organizing immigrants from the European continent to go to the colonies and earning commissions from the noble lords. Frankly, if it weren’t for a powerful leader like Franz, the nobles of the Holy Roman Empire’s fiefdoms would never be as well-off as they were now. Developing a territory was extremely expensive. Even though the nobles were quite wealthy, they could easily go bankrupt if they didn’t have a plan. To help them build their territories, Franz had specifically hired the children of nobles with territorial development experience to serve as their development consultants, helping them formulate plans based on their specific situations. Of course, that wasn’t enough. In addition to the development plans, there were bank loans with sufficiently low interest rates. Compared to the market’s commercial loan rates of dozens of percent, the policy-based loans offered by the Royal Bank only charged a symbolic 2%. It was truly a symbolic amount. There were no strings attached. The 2% interest rate wasn’t even enough to cover the operating costs, so there was no profit to speak of. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say it was a charitable act. In fact, the Royal Bank’s unique nature, from the moment it was established, meant it could not pursue high interest rates and high returns like a regular commercial bank. So, the Royal Bank never accepted regular commercial loans. It only dealt with international loans or policy-based loans, and the interest rate was never high. Naturally, the enterprises of the royal consortium were an exception. Its own companies could get preferential loans from the Royal Bank. After all, even the emperor had to eat. For the sake of the royal family’s reputation, the Royal Bank was not meant to be profitable, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t make money indirectly through other channels. For example, providing low-interest loans to nobles might seem unprofitable, but the interests hidden behind it were extraordinary. If Franz hadn’t been emperor, such a business would never have fallen to him. The loans themselves were insignificant, but behind them lay the economic lifelines of the numerous noble lords in the Holy Roman Empire. If Franz could see this, others naturally could too. As early as the initial granting of fiefdoms, some capitalists, unwilling to be left out, tried to intervene, but the endings for those people were never good. There was no way around it. The Holy Roman Empire’s noble fiefdoms had been won with a sword and a gun. Trying to control their lifelines through economic means was nothing short of suicidal. The grass has now grown on the graves of those who fantasized about using loan traps to usurp the nobles’ positions. If you couldn’t beat them with contracts, it didn’t matter as long as you could beat them with guns. The noble fiefdoms were essentially independent principalities, and that was no joke. Once you were on their territory, if they decided to turn on you, a few capitalists would have no chance of turning the tables. Not paying your debts was a tradition passed down from their ancestors. You only had to open a history book to see that killing your creditor to get out of a debt was nothing new. The Royal Bank could handle this business because Franz was the nobles’ feudal lord, and the loans it provided had very low interest. It could be publicly announced that they were helping their allies through a financial crisis, allowing them to gain both fame and profit without any trouble. This wasn’t an option for anyone else since no one else’s involvement would work. The predecessors had already set an example. There was no problem with borrowing money at a usurious rate. They’d sign off on the most demanding loan conditions imaginable, as long as they could kill the creditor afterward. Even if they couldn’t kill them, it didn’t matter. On their own territory, a lord had the right to set their own laws and taxes, as long as they didn’t contradict the central government’s decrees. For example, some lords even created a “High-Interest Loan Exemption Act,” which legally stipulated that any commercial loan with an interest rate of more than 8% was not protected by law. They fully complied with the spirit of the Holy Roman Empire’s constitution, but they just changed one number in the criteria for usury. The standard usury rate was lowered from 48% to 8%, and the debts were legally written off. As for the “spirit of the contract,” you couldn’t eat that. Once they gave up on their principles, the capitalists were completely helpless against these princes who could make their own rules. You learn from your mistakes. With the bloody lessons of their “martyred” predecessors, the bankers had wised up and promptly put these princes on their loan blacklists. Even if a commercial bank truly wanted to provide a loan, it would have to be signed in the home country, and the collateral would also have to be there. They were afraid that these nobles would simply default on their debts and “flip the table” on them. Aside from the potential political gains, low-interest loans could actually be profitable, but the time horizon would have to be extended to 20-30 years or even longer. The Royal Bank might not handle commercial loans for individuals, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t handle individual deposits. Don’t let these noble lords’ poverty fool you now. Once their territories were developed, they would all be major tycoons in the future. With their deposits, the Royal Bank would one day become the bank with the most abundant cash flow in the entire world, without exception. No one in their right mind would ever offer a loan with just 2% of interest, especially when they had to open branches in the colonies. Even with the Central Bank’s support, it was a guaranteed loss-making project. The political gains could be pushed to a state-owned bank just as easily. According to the Royal Bank’s public financial reports, its overseas colonial branches alone lost millions of guilders every year. If it weren’t for its value-added services, like acting as a bond agent or helping companies with IPOs, this top-ten bank would have been at the top of the world’s bank loss rankings for years. Making money has its benefits, but not making money also has its benefits. A non-profit bank that often operated at a loss earned Franz an immense reputation. Although the bank’s assets had been expanding ever since its establishment, its non-profit nature made it impossible for anyone to feel jealous. Of course, that was just what the average person thought. Those in finance were already seeing red with envy. Only they truly understood the potential benefits of having a bank with such abundant cash flow. But their envy was useless. On the surface, the Royal Bank was a charitable institution. If it ever made a “profit,” besides filling its previous financial losses, the surplus was taken by the emperor and used for charity. Compared to all the other banks on the market, the Royal Bank was a model of conscience for the banking industry. If it came under fire for that, no other bank would be able to survive. In a sense, the Royal Bank also served as an “intelligence organization,” monitoring every move in the colonies. While they couldn’t know what every noble ate for every meal, they could figure out the general state of development in the territories. Which nobles were well-behaved, which ones were ambitious, and which ones wanted to stir up trouble—it was all on record. Just as a chancellor is said to be able to hold a boat in his stomach, Franz was also magnanimous. As long as these people didn’t cross his bottom line, it was a win-win for both ruler and subject. If they crossed the line, then he, the emperor, couldn’t be blamed for setting a trap for them. That’s right, a trap. In the broader social context of Europe, an emperor couldn’t do anything to a noble unless they committed a major crime. Even a powerful emperor like Franz couldn’t convict someone before they’d actually caused trouble. All an emperor could do was make things difficult for them or dig a few holes in their path. Making things difficult had no finesse and was too easy to be criticized for. By comparison, secretly digging a hole was much more satisfying. Many people who fell into a hole and were buried never even knew who did it. However, this kind of treatment wasn’t for just anyone. Ordinary minor nobles couldn’t even get on Franz’s radar unless they raised a banner of rebellion. Franz had seen plenty of nobles asking for trouble, but he had never actually seen one openly rebel. Even the most brainless ones only joined the revolutionaries. No one actually shouted the slogan, “Are kings, nobles, generals, and ministers born to their ranks?” In a spirit of being helpful, Franz decided to lend his allies a hand. After all, the colonies were currently short on young, able-bodied laborers, and the nobles were on the verge of fighting over people. Franz didn’t dare to absorb millions of foreign immigrants at once, but providing millions of temporary jobs was no problem. He wasn’t afraid the nobles would refuse. This was a rare chance for cheap labor, and once they missed this opportunity, they wouldn’t be able to get it again. Now was the most severe period of the economic crisis. The average wages for European workers had fallen to a ten-year low and were still slowly declining. Don’t be fooled by the high salary of roughly 15 guilders a month for French mercenaries as that was blood money earned on the battlefield. An ordinary worker, even if they went to the colonies, couldn’t expect to be paid that much. Based on the current labor market in Europe, hiring an able-bodied young man to clear land in Africa could be done for five guilders a month, with food and board included. Considering the unequal incomes of the people in various countries, some impoverished nations would accept a salary of just three guilders a month for simple food and lodging. This kind of cheap labor was simply unimaginable in the Holy Roman Empire. Without doubling the salary, hiring anyone was a joke. Under the influence of the Great Emigration Policy, the Holy Roman Empire’s labor costs had, without anyone noticing, climbed to the highest in all of Europe, rivaling even Great Britain. “Cheap” labor had become a thing of the past. If the Holy Roman Empire’s industry hadn’t already developed, these high labor costs alone would have been enough to kill all labor-intensive industries. Labor costs were determined by a combination of economic level and market supply and demand. If labor costs in the Holy Roman Empire were high, the labor costs in the colonies were even higher. Without high pay, who would be willing to go to a desolate and harsh place?
*** https://postimg.cc/gallery/PwXsBkC (Maps of the current territories of the countries in this novel made by ScH)
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