"Rise up, slaves who are suffering from hunger and cold. Rise up, all the suffering people in the world. Their blood is already boiling. We must fight for the truth."

Outside the residence of Prime Minister Zuo of the Ming Dynasty, there were many bankrupt farmers and unemployed workers, singing the "National Anthem of the New Ming Dynasty" and holding signs saying "Take a walk".

Of course, these people have reasons for their dissatisfaction. Things are obviously blooming and things are improving. Why did the stock market crash, the bond market crash, the banks run, and the factories close down all of a sudden?

How did this happen? What is the problem? Why is it that it has been more than a year or almost two years since the crisis occurred, and the Ming court is still at a loss?

In fact, Zhuge Weidao responded to the crisis in a very timely manner. After the Shanghai securities market plummeted due to the inability to pay off some mature bank bonds and the serious losses of several agricultural companies that specialized in serving small farmers, he immediately let the people below him.

Officials in charge of the economy and think tanks funded by the Zhuge family should conduct careful investigations and careful analysis to see where the problem lies.

However, the answers obtained after investigation and analysis left Prime Minister Zhuge very speechless!

The root of the problem turned out to be that we "won too much" in the last world war. We won too much, so we were in crisis!

These words may not sound like human words, but if you analyze them carefully, you will see what is really going on!

It turns out that this wave of economic crisis in the Ming Dynasty is a typical example of overproduction. Capitalism always leads to excess. And the most serious overproduction seems to be not industrial products, but agricultural products!

In other words, there are too many delicious things to eat!

This is not a joke, it is a real thing. In fact, when Zhuge Weidao looked at the world map with great satisfaction every day, he should have thought that this day would come.

Because the Ming Dynasty gained so much from the last war!

Not to mention the bits and pieces, but the large chunks suitable for large-scale agriculture include the entire Oceania, including Australia and New Zealand! There is also the British Oregon region, including another timeline.

All of the US states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and part of Wyoming were also eaten.

In addition, California and Texas, which were under the name of the Mexican Empire, also became a paradise for immigrants from the Ming Dynasty and those from the Kingdom of Japan, a vassal state of the Ming Dynasty, to develop farms, pan for gold, and dig for oil.

There is also the Pampas Plateau, which was "unowned" at the end of World War I in 1833, and was easily taken over by the Ming Dynasty.

Almost all of the above land is a good place for the development of large-scale agriculture! Even the Central Basin of California, where floods and droughts are unpredictable, has become rich in wheat because of the dam invested and built by "Longzhong Water Conservancy" (an industry of the Zhuge family)

, fertile soil for rice, fruits and vegetables.

The fertile soil in the above places is difficult to develop by a single family farm. These places are most suitable for the development of mechanized agriculture and large pastures! Of course, the Ming Dynasty also encouraged domestic small farmers to go to those places to acquire land for development.

But the small farmers traveled thousands of miles to those places with their families, so the Ming court was too embarrassed to give them just one or two hundred acres, right? They had no motivation to go there! So the Ming court not only gave them a large area of ​​land,

, and also provided low-interest or even interest-free development loans to help them purchase agricultural machinery. Therefore, after migrating to these "new territories", most of the small farmers in the Ming Dynasty became farmers with large tracts of land.

At the same time, Ming Dynasty's big capital was also encouraged to engage in various developments in the "new territories". When these big capitals went to the new territories, of course they had to take the path of mechanized large farms.

The production costs of mechanized large farms in these new territories are incomparable to the costs of local small farmers in the Ming Dynasty!

As more and more fertile soil in the new territories was developed, starting about ten years ago, low-cost agricultural products from the new territories began to hit the local market of the Ming Dynasty. And the lives of the local small farmers of the Ming Dynasty began to become more and more difficult. But at that time

The Ming court did not think this was a problem. Small farmers had a hard time, so they moved to new territories to become large farmers! Large farms are more efficient and can provide more cheap agricultural products for the local people. Food is the first necessity for the people.

Well, this must be a good thing!

As for the bankrupt small farms in the country and the debts attached to these small farms, it does not seem to be a big problem. At the worst, the land-divided farms are allowed to be transferred, and the proceeds from the transfer are used to repay the debts.

As a result, mechanized large farms with high production efficiency also began to appear in many places in the Ming Dynasty!

At this time, the financial situation of those small farmers who were still struggling to support themselves began to increase rapidly, and they gradually embarked on the path of debt, bankruptcy, and emigration (going overseas or working in cities).

The process of bankruptcy of local small farmers in Ming Dynasty is from slow to fast, and faster and faster. At the beginning, it did not seem to be a big problem, but as the number of large farms increased, the profits of small farmers became thinner and thinner, and the wave of bankruptcies

It became more and more fierce, and the output of agricultural products also increased. As a result, the surplus crisis and debt crisis began to break out from agriculture and individual small farms throughout the Ming Dynasty, and soon spread to some large-scale enterprises that were not very competitive.

agricultural company.

The concentrated bankruptcy of a large number of farmers has inevitably affected the consumption of industrial products, and the crisis encountered by large agricultural companies in new overseas territories has temporarily "frozen" a large number of construction and investment projects - steel bars, cement, ships, etc.

The demand for vehicles and agricultural machinery has plummeted again!

The production capacity of Daming Industry has been expanding rapidly in the past few decades! Production capacity was already somewhat excessive, and consumption and investment have shrunk rapidly. Of course, the industry has also experienced a crisis of overproduction.

The oversupply crisis in agriculture and industry will inevitably affect the financial industry. Stocks, bonds, and mortgages all have problems!

Now that you have discovered a problem, let’s solve it!

When he just "clarified" the problem, Zhuge Weidao was not in a hurry at all - it was just an economic crisis! It was agricultural surplus, industrial surplus, stock collapse, bond collapse, and bank failure. How could this be so difficult to defeat Prime Minister Zhuge?

? Prime Minister Zhuge understands economic crises best. "Keynesianism" comes! Lower interest rates, increase national debt, increase government spending, issue agricultural subsidies, and vigorously stimulate the economy!

After a short operation, the economy has been stimulated to pick up a bit, the collapsed stock market has also risen a bit, and the banks that broke out in the debt crisis have also relaxed a little. However, the effect is still unsatisfactory, and the non-performing loans of the entire banking system are still there.

It is growing, but the market is also a bit stagnant.

At this time, an unexpected situation occurred - under Zhuge Weidao's stimulus policy, Ming Dynasty actually had a trade deficit! And the deficit was caused by cheap industrial products from the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom!

It turns out that this economic crisis is actually global, caused by the continuous expansion of production capacity in industrialized countries around the world in the past few decades. Or, to be more precise, it is due to the temporary decline in production efficiency after the second industrial revolution.

It cannot grow, but the inefficient production capacity accumulated by various countries is released in large quantities, resulting in a surplus crisis.

The production capacity of the world's major industrial countries such as the Ming Dynasty, the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Roman Republic, and the Roman Empire has generally maintained continuous growth. Although the United States and the United Kingdom experienced industrial decline for a period of time due to the difficulties they faced after the defeat of the last war.

Production capacity declined. However, this decline did not form a long-term trend, but began to grow rapidly after overcoming difficulties.

Behind this growth in production capacity is the continued growth of corporate, national and household debt!

If these production capacities cannot be effectively utilized, then the crisis of overproduction will inevitably spread to the financial industry. In this case, of course, countries must try their best to expand exports to alleviate the domestic overproduction crisis and avoid financial collapse.

Always crashed!”

By the way, the finances of various countries are not "free" now because they are still implementing "redeemable banknotes", so no one has the ability to print unlimited money, not even the Ming Dynasty.

This transition from redeemable banknotes to "real banknotes" that cannot be redeemed cannot be changed overnight.

If you are not careful, the currency will collapse!

Therefore, the Zhuge Weidao government had no choice but to take immediate measures to significantly increase tariffs to block foreign goods from the "Chinese Economic Circle." Other industrial countries immediately followed suit, closing their doors and engaging in trade protection.

As a result, the relatively free international trade order after World War I suddenly disappeared, and the trade barriers of various countries interrupted international complementarity, making the industry and agriculture of various countries even more depressed, and international trade-related industries went bankrupt.

The frenzy. And the Ming Dynasty’s economy, which had initially improved due to stimulus policies, fell into depression again!
Chapter completed!