The Postal Service Department of the Ministry of Transport wants to engage in postal remittances and rely on postal remittances to further develop banking services such as savings and loans.
This made the Ministry of Finance very dissatisfied, while the Ministry of Industry and Commerce maintained a cautious attitude.
After there was no conclusion between departments on this matter, and after the Ministry of Transportation was unwilling to give up, the matter naturally escalated gradually, and finally appeared in the staff meeting for discussion.
However, the counselors' ministers and co-organizers' opinions on this matter are not unanimous.
The first is the military. They don't care whether banks are banks or not. It has nothing to do with them anyway. However, they support the Post Office Department in establishing a postal remittance system because it makes it easier for soldiers to send money to your home.
Nowadays, in order to avoid local separatism and other negative factors, the soldiers of the Great Chu Empire have in principle adopted measures for soldiers to serve in other places. This means that it will be more troublesome for soldiers to send money home.
The previous method used by the military was to centralize large-amount transfers to other places through financial banks. First, the money sent home by soldiers in a certain unit was collected, and the collection information was collected, and then the military division headquarters sent people Go to the finance bank to handle large-amount off-site transfers. The money will be sent to the local garrison headquarters, and then the garrison headquarters will notify the soldiers' families one by one according to the payment list.
The whole process is very troublesome and complicated, but it has to be done, because after many soldiers join the army, they also think about their parents, brothers, sisters, children and other family members back home, and want to use their limited subsidies and all the things they received during the war. Subsidies and trophies are sent home to improve the lives of their families.
How should I put it? You can't just eat and drink enough and then ignore your family.
Although the subsidies for soldiers are not large, they are still there.
Furthermore, the Chu army's troops fought quite frequently, so the soldiers could also get some private trophies.
They want to send money home, so the military naturally has to provide this service.
Now, the Postal Service wants to open a remittance business, and has made it clear that this postal remittance business will be launched in the garrison post office.
The Garrison Post Office was an institution in the Great Chu Empire that specialized in serving the military and transmitting official military documents or private letters of soldiers. It was run by the Postal Department and supervised by the Military Logistics Department.
If the garrison post office can also open a remittance business, it will be much more convenient for soldiers to send money home in the future, and it will also save the military a lot of manpower and material resources.
Therefore, the military strongly supports the Post Office in conducting postal remittances.
It also supports the garrison post office to carry out deposit business. In addition to sending money, soldiers also need to save money. In the past, in order to meet the soldiers' money saving needs, the military itself did it. The soldiers deposited the money directly at the division headquarters. In the logistics department.
However, the name is not justified, and it is also prone to corruption problems. It has happened before that a logistics department official of a certain division who was responsible for the money deposited by the soldiers embezzled the soldiers' money and used it to gamble and lost everything.
In the end, in order to avoid military morale instability, the military immediately replenished the missing funds in full...
This incident has also made the military wary of this, so if the garrison post office engages in deposit business, it can also help the military solve a big problem.
In order to avoid problems such as corruption and wasted pay during the salary payment process, the top military officials have even planned to cooperate with the garrison post office in the Postal Service Department to issue salaries on their behalf.
In this way, the personnel of the Ministry of Military Affairs who are responsible for the payment of salaries can directly transfer salaries to the soldiers. When the soldiers want to spend money in cash, they can go directly to the post office to get the money.
This can also prevent soldiers from being missing because they carry their salary with them after they are injured or killed. If there is a garrison post office account, after a soldier is injured or killed, the military will cooperate with the garrison post office to transfer the funds in the account to the families of the sacrificial soldiers.
Because of these benefits, the military strongly supports the Postal Service in its remittance and savings business.
As for the loan business... it has nothing to do with their military, and their military keeps silent about it.
In addition to the military, the ministers of staff and co-organizing ministers in the civil service system have different opinions.
Yuan Gaofeng, the Counselor in charge of industrial, commercial and economic affairs, has reserved his opinions on the postal banking business and neither supports nor opposes it... However, if it is to be opened, it must be opened in strict accordance with the regulatory regulations of the Department of Finance and cannot be messed with.
In this regard, the Department of Finance has been working overtime for many days in a row, reviewing and supplementing the existing regulatory rules for the financial industry, and further strengthening financial supervision.
For example, the margin system was proposed for the first time to ensure the safety of depositors' funds, to prevent banks from insufficient funds to pay due to bad loans or other problems, and to avoid the risk of runs.
All banks are required to pay a certain percentage of margin.
This point is actually not aimed at financial banks or the Postal Bank under discussion, but at some government-run local banks and private banks.
Government-run local banks, these banks are generally funded and established by provincial industry departments.
In principle, all officially funded enterprises, whether directly funded by the Ministry of Industry or funded by local finance, are managed by the Ministry of Industry and various local industrial departments and industrial divisions. The industrial departments and industrial divisions in these places adopt the following policies: It is under dual management with the Ministry of Local Government and Industry.
In addition to central agencies, in principle, local agencies not directly under the Ministry of Industry are not allowed to establish and manage enterprises.
If you want to start a business in your local area, it doesn’t matter what kind of business it is. It can only be established and managed by the local industry department or industry department and other agencies directly under the Ministry of Industry. No other agencies are allowed.
This is to avoid administrative and commercial involvement.
Government-run enterprises are a double-edged sword. If used well, they will be a pillar of national defense and people's livelihood. If used improperly, they will compete with the people for profit.
Because government-run enterprises naturally have an official background, it can easily lead to unfair competition, squeeze the living space of private capital, and cause the industry to lose competition.
And an industry, especially the development of industry, cannot lose competition, otherwise there will be a situation of people waiting to die.
This is what dying in peace means!
Therefore, the Da Chu Empire officially maintained great restrictions on government-run enterprises. They could not operate them casually, and even if they wanted to operate, they must be restricted to those under the Ministry of Industry.
The same is true for the banking industry. The Dachu Empire officially did not restrict local governments from creating local banks, but they were required to operate under the Ministry of Industry. At the same time, the number was not large. There are currently only six local government-run banks, mainly concentrated in the economy. in more developed areas.
In addition, there are a large number of private banks in the private sector, which were reformed from various old-style financial institutions, such as banks.
So far, these private banks are relatively small in scale. Many of the early banks were not professional banks. They were mostly run by other private shops or wealthy businessmen.
It wasn't until the Chu Empire promulgated formal financial laws and regulations, and with the establishment of financial banks, a small number of these private money shops and other institutions saw opportunities, actively carried out reforms in accordance with financial laws, and registered as A formal bank that legally engages in banking business.
So far, there are about a hundred private banks in the Dachu Empire. These private banks are generally small in scale, relatively regional, and have poor risk resistance capabilities.
In order to further standardize the banking industry, improve the ability to resist risks, and avoid economic crises caused by bank problems, the Financial Department of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce of the Dachu Empire has successively issued a series of policies and regulations.
This time, supervision has been further strengthened.
As long as the Post Office's banking business complies with regulatory regulations, the Ministry of Industry and Commerce will interfere too much.
As for whether it can be done, it depends on the game between other parties.
After all, once the Postal Service opens a bank, it will be destined to be a large-scale national bank, second only to the financial bank, and its tentacles will probably go deeper into the grassroots than the financial bank, which will have a certain impact on finances.
Naturally, the Finance Department is firmly opposed to this!
However, there were also people who supported it, such as Guo Quanshu, the Minister of Civil Affairs, who expressed support for the Post Office to open banking business.
Guo Quanshu's starting point is naturally not something like industrial and commercial development. He doesn't understand these things at all. As the minister in charge of gifts, Guo Quanshu has been at the top of the imperial cabinet for a long time. His starting point is more to balance all aspects. The power of the empire allows all factions in the empire to maintain a relatively delicate balance.
This is also the main reason why he has been trusted and reused by Luo Zhixue for a long time.
In other aspects, Guo Quanshu is actually not very good, but he is still somewhat capable in playing power.
He has seen that the Ministry of Finance relies on Finance Bank, especially the loan business of Finance Bank, which has repeatedly affected the direction of local construction.
Local construction, especially when carrying out some major projects, requires financial support. In addition to policy allocations, policy loans from financial banks are also very important.
The funds of financial banks are not unlimited. They are very particular about where they are used. This creates room for rent-seeking by power.
In this regard, Guo Quanshu naturally wants to suppress it a little bit, otherwise it will be difficult to balance.
Of course, this reason cannot be stated. His reason is that there is currently only one financial bank among domestic national banks, and experience tells us that an industry needs full competition to better promote the development of the industry.
To this end, he brought out the defense industry and used several major arsenals as examples to illustrate.
The reason why the domestic defense industry can develop rapidly today is that the purchase price of flintlock muskets has continued to decline, from the previous price of twenty taels of silver to the current eight taels of silver; the price of musketeers' light plate armor It has been reduced from about twenty taels of silver before to the current twelve taels;
And not only has the price been reduced, but the performance of the muskets and plate armor is getting better and better.
These are all because there are many arsenals in the country that can produce flintlock muskets and plate armor at the same time. As the purchaser, the military has ample choices. In order to compete for military orders, major arsenals have to improve technology and lower prices. wait.
Based on the needs of competition, he supported the establishment of a second large national bank. Now, relying on various post stations, the Post Office has sufficient conditions and manpower to open a national bank.
With the heavyweight Counselor Guo Quanshu expressing his support, the discussion on the postal department's preparation for bank business also came to an end.
manage!
The question now is what to do?
And this naturally led to a larger discussion and competition.
In the end, discussions took place in the discussion area, and after many ministers exchanged political interests in private, they finally finalized a detailed plan.
Let the Post Office handle it!
After all, the post station itself belongs to the postal department. It would be too difficult to run this national bank without the postal department. In addition, the remittance business is also difficult to operate.
However, the specific business operations must be separated from the post station and a separate government-run banking enterprise must be established. However, the ownership does not belong to the Ministry of Industry, but to the Postal Service Department of the Ministry of Transport.
After all, the banking business will be very large, and there will be a lot of people, and the staff at each post station are actually people with official status. Even if they are just messengers, they will have the official status of ninth grade and eat royal food!
Postal personnel were given official status because this thing had a strong administrative and military role. In the early years, the post system was directly under the management of the military.
In order to ensure the speed of delivery of urgent official documents and military documents, the post system cannot be used as an ordinary commercial institution, or even managed by an ordinary government agency. Instead, it requires specialized agencies for dedicated management.
But in banks, not to mention Postal Bank, even ordinary employees and middle and low-level managers in financial banks are ordinary employees, and only senior managers have official status.
Therefore, it is very necessary to split the postal and banking services and then set up a separate government-run banking enterprise. Only with the name of this government-run enterprise can they hire a large number of ordinary employees.
At the same time, the Finance Department has also gained their benefits, which is to let the Postal Department open up the post channel, so that the financial bank's remittance business can also use the post system to implement the remittance business better and more conveniently. Of course, since the post channel is used Of course they also have to pay for space and manpower.
Regarding opening up the remittance and postal channels, the Postal Department has to agree even if it doesn't agree. The senior staff members and co-organizers at the top have already finalized the plan. As subordinate agencies, they can only follow the rules.
So, in February of the 13th year of Chengshun, Dachu Dibao officially issued an announcement to prepare for the establishment of 'Dachu Postal Bank'.
The Postal Department also carried out certain reforms. The Postal Department continued to directly manage the postal business and established the Dachu Postal Bank.
Postal Bank will be directly managed by the Postal Department, but will be provided with business guidance by the Finance Department and supervised by the Financial Department of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce.
The postal service wanted to engage in banking business, originally to fill the huge deficit of the post station. As long as it could make money, they had no objection to anything else.
Well, it’s useless to have opinions. This is the empire’s highest decision-making, and any opinions must be suppressed.
After finalizing the postal bank, the Dachu Empire also took advantage of the situation to carry out further reforms to the empire's financial system, such as the comprehensive and mandatory implementation of the margin system and deposit insurance system.
The most important thing is to merge some of the financial supervision functions of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce and the Ministry of Finance, and establish an independent General Administration of Financial Supervision. This is a second-level administrative agency that directly belongs to the Government Affairs Council.
Responsible for all financial supervision and regulatory functions of the empire.
Immediately, the financial bank was split, mainly to take back a series of powers such as currency issuance and financial supervision to establish the Central Bank of the Dachu Empire. This central bank was under the jurisdiction of the Imperial Financial Supervision Bureau.
In the future, the Central Bank of the Dachu Empire will undertake a series of tasks such as financial supervision, currency issuance, and financial regulation. For example, the deposits in each bank are paid to the central bank for preservation.
After the Finance Bank is split, it will evolve into a pure commercial bank and continue to be owned by the Finance Department. After all, this is the Finance Department's purse. If anyone dares to take over the Finance Bank, they will have to go to war directly with the Finance Department.
As for Tang Fengze, the counselor in charge of taxation and finance, he is not dead yet.
The establishment of the Postal Bank and the subsequent establishment of the General Administration of Financial Supervision, as well as the split of the Finance Bank, all led to some turmoil in the empire's financial industry in the spring of the thirteenth year of Chengshun.
However, these turmoils are not major and are controllable.
Moreover, after the establishment of the General Administration of Financial Supervision, the financial industry of the Dachu Empire has also embarked on a fast track.
The State Administration of Financial Supervision issued a series of financial-related policies and regulations and began to implement their first major project.
On February 18, the 13th year of Chengshun, Wang Dehua, the first director of the State Administration of Financial Supervision, wrote a letter formally requesting the abolition of the two yuan reforms and the issuance of the first set of official banknotes of the Dachu Empire.
The purpose of abolishing the two currencies and replacing the Yuan with the Yuan is to establish legal currency and regulate the casting and circulation of currency.
The most important one is that the new legal currency unit 'yuan' will adopt the silver standard. One legal dollar can be exchanged for 37 grams of pure silver, which is also the silver content of one-tael silver coins in the past.
To put it bluntly, in order to avoid trouble, we continue to use the original currency specifications, just changing the name!
What's more important is to start issuing official banknotes!
The banknotes of the Dachu Empire were only banknotes from various banks. At first, there were also banknotes circulating among the people. However, later the Dachu Empire severely cracked down on the private issuance of banknotes. At the same time, all official funds in and out were only Banknotes from the Finance Bank are recognized. Therefore, in the past ten years, the most circulated banknotes in the Chu Empire were actually banknotes from the Finance Bank.
And this kind of banknote, to a certain extent, has actually become an official banknote.
Fixed face value, bearer, and official recognition can be used to pay taxes, which gives financial bank banknotes a basis for widespread circulation.
On this basis, the General Administration of Financial Supervision of the Dachu Empire will officially create the first set of officially issued banknotes of the Dachu Empire.
Throughout the development of banknotes, many rulers in ancient Chinese history lacked basic financial concepts, or believed that people’s money was their own money, and did not care about the inflation and credit value of banknotes. Especially those issued by the Ming Dynasty The so-called banknotes are even more stinking...
The government does not collect government-issued banknotes when collecting taxes... How can you expect the people to accept it?
So by the end of the Ming Dynasty, the reputation of paper money was already bad. The government paper money of the Ming Dynasty was not as trustworthy as the various convertible paper notes issued by wealthy private businessmen. Even if paper money was used for large-scale private transactions, only a small amount of paper money was used. Privately issued banknotes.
This was also the reason why the Dachu Empire officials did not directly issue banknotes at the beginning, but used the financial bank to issue bearer banknotes and adopted a curve to save the country.
If the government issues banknotes directly, the people will ignore you...
Relatively speaking, the credit rating of financial banks is higher. After all, the names used are not banknotes or banknotes, but directly bearer deposit certificates.
In this way, it can be regarded as reopening the gradual trust of the Chinese people in banknotes. Of course, in fact, there is not much trust. Many people still do not trust the bearer banknotes of financial banks to this day. They are more willing to trust real money.
However, a certain foundation has been laid, and the financial bank's banknote issuance has reached tens of millions. Therefore, the Dachu Empire officials are finally preparing to implement official legal banknotes.
In order to avoid turmoil, to avoid public panic, and to gain public acceptance, the Financial Supervisory Authority plans to use a certain period of time to gradually promote the new first set of currency, and allows bearer banknotes previously issued by financial banks to continue to circulate, and can be used in pairs 1. Exchange official banknotes.
Of course, after these bearer banknotes enter the bank, they can only get in but cannot get out.
The State Administration of Financial Supervision, in order to abolish the two yuan reforms and issue official banknotes, is very cautious, and this cautious attitude also won Luo Zhixue's approval!
