The land of Sichuan and Sichuan has a tradition of using iron money for hundreds of years. They internally trust iron money and their own friends.
Whether it is common people or wealthy families, they basically all agree on the use and circulation of iron money.
After all, it is still a kind of physical currency. It is difficult to say that it will have no value. Even if iron is not made into currency, it is still valuable.
Although physical currency can also experience explosive depreciation like paper currency, the main reason is that the weight is too low under the operation of the court.
The value of physical currency comes from itself, mainly depending on its quality and weight. The biggest variable is the behavior of the court that issues the currency.
For example, Dong Zhuo's madness and Sun Quan's extreme greed allowed Dong Zhuo to use a small amount of money or a large spring like Sun Quan to exchange for a thousand dollars. Without any guarantee, he would take one dollar and force others to use it as a thousand dollars, then even the physical currency would be lost directly. Circulation value.
As long as the court that enforces some rules does not go too far, the value of physical currency will still be strong. For example, Song Dynasty copper coins are a well-known world currency. They have strong value and high credibility, and everyone is willing to use them.
The ones who were ruined were Jiaozi and Huizi, and the copper coins were full of value.
Like copper coins, although iron coins do not have such a large circulation area, they are still valuable. Therefore, many iron coins were traded in the Guanzhong Province of the Ming Dynasty.
The Guanzhong Province of the Ming Dynasty, which had relatively frequent economic exchanges with the Sichuan and Sichuan regions, had a parallel situation of copper coins and iron coins during the Northern Song Dynasty. This was also the case later during the rule of the Jin Kingdom. It was also the case after the Ming Dynasty established the Guanzhong Province, and it continued until There is no change in the trend today.
But Su Yonglin didn't really like iron money.
The value of iron money was too low, the weight was too heavy, and it restricted commercial circulation too much. Even Sichuan and Shu could not bear the weight, so they finally came up with Jiaozi as a substitute.
Moreover, iron is more chemically unstable than copper, silver, and gold, and is more prone to oxidation and rust. It is prone to large-scale rust if left untouched, and its value preservation efficiency is low. This makes Jiaozi often appear as improvement measures. Crisis of value.
Therefore, after comprehensive consideration, Su Yonglin has plans to completely abolish the circulation of iron money by then. Therefore, the Zhongdu treasury will not be allowed to collect iron money, and the tax will not accept iron money. Iron money will not be used as a national reserve, and only copper coins will be used.
This behavior brought certain troubles to the merchants in the Guanzhong area, which caused a crisis in the value and credit of the iron money in their hands, which aroused their protests and believed that the imperial court was unfair to them.
However, Su Yonglin refused to change and clearly informed the Guanzhong merchants that the imperial court could not accept iron money as tax reserves and had to choose either copper coins or white strips.
But the imperial court tentatively recognized the value of iron money.
His arm couldn't twist the excavator. After the court determined this, how could the Guanzhong businessman be the court's opponent?
Despite this, for a considerable period of time at the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Su Yonglin was busy with various economic affairs and had no time to adjust monetary policy. He temporarily expressed support for the long-established folk tradition.
Except for the somewhat unintentional feeling of issuing IOUs due to the tight economy, it basically did not touch the monetary situation.
And after all, Su Yonglin does not have any good plan to reform the currency at present.
Of course iron money doesn't work, copper money is also very difficult, gold and silver and other physical currencies are even more difficult.
Although Su Yonglin collected a large amount of gold and silver reserves from the nobles of the Jin Kingdom and the purged bureaucrats and landlords, and put all these precious metals into the national treasury for storage, the amount could only roughly meet the gold and silver standard circulation in a region.
For example, if the Yanyun region, or the Liaodong region, or the Guanzhong region, etc., want to carry out nationwide reforms, this kind of storage capacity is simply not enough.
The shortage of precious metals in China has indeed increased the difficulty of currency reform to a considerable extent. The emperor's lavish spending during the Western Han Dynasty and the prevalent system of burials of precious metals at that time caused a large amount of gold and silver to lie underground and cannot circulate.
It is not impossible to use copper coins, a currency minted by the Southern Song Dynasty, for a long time. Anyway, the Southern Song Dynasty will be completely destroyed soon, and the currency they minted will be directly transformed into the currency of the Ming Dynasty.
But the problem is that deflation will always be a headache for the court and will affect the economic development of the Ming Dynasty at all times. If we want to get out of the shadow of deflation, we must find another way.
For example, he started a big voyage to acquire American silver, and used a huge amount of American silver to complete the silver standard currency reform.
But at present, it cannot be said to be unrealistic. It is just that it is very difficult and requires a lot of time. You also need to carry out a large-scale voyage to explore the Americas.
This was by no means impossible. Su Yonglin did not believe that the people of the Ming Dynasty could not do what the Portuguese and Spanish could do back then. However, the risk and difficulty were indeed higher.
There is a lot of silver in Japan and the distance is also close, but Japan itself is still using Southern Song Dynasty copper coins for circulation, and often uses the strategy of exchanging silver for copper coins to send back copper coins, which further aggravates the outflow of Southern Song Dynasty copper coins.
The silver of this small island country can be the icing on the cake, but cannot provide help in times of need and cannot play a decisive role.
Therefore, the reform of the silver standard and the gold standard had always been in Su Yonglin's plan, but he had not proposed it.
The Ministry of Finance was very concerned about currency issues. It was dissatisfied with the Ming Dynasty's continuous use of copper coins and iron coins from the Southern Song Dynasty. It wanted to change the status quo and use Ming Dynasty's own currency to develop the economy.
In the absence of precious metals to build physical currency, they hoped to promote paper currency reform to wean Ming Dynasty away from dependence on metal currency.
This idea is very advanced.
Beginning in the fifth year of Hongwu, Lin Jingchun led the Ministry of Finance to propose that the imperial notes be directly upgraded to Ming Dynasty treasure banknotes, and then the Ming Dynasty treasure banknotes would be linked to staple food and salt, two necessities to sustain life, and simply withdraw copper coins from circulation to solve the problem. Huge financial problem.
People cannot live without staple grains and salt. They have to buy staple grains and salt in the Ming Dynasty. No matter who they are, they can only use the Ming Dynasty treasure banknotes and only recognize the Ming Dynasty treasure banknotes.
The imperial court always had sufficient storage of staple grains and salt, and controlled the production of staple grains and salt to a considerable extent, thus ensuring that the value of Ming Dynasty banknotes remained strong.
State-owned farms and state-owned salt farms must be established on a large scale and maintained in good operation. They must be fully controlled by the imperial court and cannot be shaken.
The Ministry of Finance will set up a special and rigorous plan for this purpose to tightly control the issuance of Ming Dynasty treasure banknotes and the production and sales of staple grains and salt.
The Ming Dynasty treasure banknotes are grain and salt, so they have strong value. The imperial court can safely issue a certain number of Ming Dynasty treasure banknotes and set a strict rotation period for the banknotes.
In this regard, some practices of the Southern Song Dynasty court can be adopted, and there is precedent.
After this suggestion was put forward, some people expressed support and believed that this was the most feasible strategy under the current situation.
Because everyone knows the meaning of staple food and salt, both literate and non-literate people know it, so this is possible and can solve the current economic dependence on copper coins and iron coins.
But some people have suggested that this is not possible.
Grain and salt are indeed needed by everyone, and they are good anchors of value. However, it is not easy to store these two items for a long time. They may become corrupted or affected by moisture at any time due to various problems, and storage costs are high. Extremely high.
Moreover, the total amount of storage is difficult to stabilize. Whenever there are three disasters, the court needs to open large-scale warehouses to release grain to provide relief to the victims, or when there is any huge military operation, it is inevitable that the Ministry of Finance's warehouse will not be used.
At that time, it will be difficult to ensure the total storage of grain and salt, and we will face great challenges. This may affect the value of Ming Dynasty treasure notes to a considerable extent and cause market panic.
As a result, the value of Ming Dynasty banknotes will face frequent fluctuations.
Especially in years with frequent famines and frequent military use, it is particularly detrimental to the long-term stability of the court.
After all, your Ming Dynasty treasure is just a piece of paper, even if it is a relatively high-value water-patterned paper, but not everyone agrees that it is just the price of a piece of water-patterned paper. If you lose salt and staple food, What's the point of this piece of paper?
