#头条创作挑战赛 #
The arrival of the new year of 2023, people should be full of vitality and hope in the new year, but also a year full of crises and challenges, perhaps there may be a world economic crisis in the near future, in fact, there were several economic crises in ancient times, so can it give us any inspiration?
One: Wang Mang's new dynasty currency reform
On January 15, 9 AD, Wang Mang took power in Chang'an and changed the year name to 'Xin'. In the late Western Han Dynasty, the government was incompetent and corrupt, the people's livelihood was deteriorating, people's hearts were scattered, and social contradictions were quite profound. Therefore, since Wang Mang became emperor, he has taken a series of measures in order to ease social conflicts. But contrary to expectations, its "monetary policy" can be called the most failed reform.
Portrait of Wang Mang
Wang Mang carried out four currency reforms, and it is known that since Qin Shi Huang unified the six countries, then carried out monetary unification, in order to reduce regional exchanges and obstacles caused by trade exchanges and currency differences, so as to promote economic development and more conducive to the stability of the country. On the other hand, Wang Mang privately made the types of money messy, and did not sort out the correct monetary system. As a direct result, these reforms replaced the old currency with higher quality money with newly minted inferior currency, and then replaced the original minted currency with inferior currency, and every time the currency was replaced, the people suffered a exploitation. Because these currencies have no credibility to speak of, during Wang Mang's monetary reform, prices soared, the social economy was very chaotic, and the ordinary people of Lebanon suffered from it, and many people even cried in the market. According to statistics, the population of the Hanping Emperor (before Wang Mang) was as high as 59 million, and with the failure of Wang Mang's reforms, social unrest led to a large number of deaths, while the statistics from the end of Wang Mang to the early Eastern Han Dynasty were only 35 million.
The currency issued by Wang Mang
Two: the economic crisis of the Three Kingdoms period
1. Dong Zhuo period
At the instigation of his mother, Emperor Ling of Han began to sell officials, and publicly bought positions in departments such as Hu Ban and Yulin under Guangluxun from the Marquis of Guan Nei to Guangluxun; As an adult, he indulged in pleasure and built the West Garden with the money from selling officials. The flow of money and goods is chaotic. During Dong Zhuo's period, he was brutal by nature, torturing and killing prisoners and even people around him, resulting in a large number of unjust, false and wrong cases, which made the people's resentment boil. He also used his power to destroy all the bronze people in the palace and the hanging bells, and even changed the five-baht coin system formulated by Emperor Wudi of Han before, and minted it into a five-cent small coin, with no patterns and words on it, and the holes around and in the middle had no outline, were not polished and processed, and were rough. As a result, the currency depreciated, domestic prices soared, and even Yihu Valley had to be sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars, so the business at that time withered.
Portrait of Dong Zhuo
2. Cao Pi period
After Cao Pi came to power, he made drastic financial reforms. In 221 AD, Cao Pi paid five baht for Gu Gui. The valley and the valley are regarded as "currency", but this retro "currency" can only make it difficult for the people to adapt, so profiteers have increased the weight of the valley with water bubbles, and used thin tapestry to replace the designated ballots to cheat the intermediate interest rate spread, resulting in chaos in the market, and the transactions are all deception. Although the imperial court's rewards and grain were still grain and salary, the common people simply did not react and went directly to the days of exchange of a few sheep for a few cattle in primitive society.
Portrait of Cao Pi
3. Eastern Wu period
In 236 AD, Sun Quan forced the circulation of "Daquan Five Hundred", that is, a new currency worth 500 five-baht coins. According to the "Tongdian Food Goods Record", Sun Quan minted Daquan 500, about 3 cm in diameter and weighing about 7.8 grams, and then, Sun Quan felt that the face value of this currency was still too small, and in 238 AD, successively issued Daquan 1,000, Daquan 2,000, Daquan 500 and other currencies, at that time Daquan 1,000, about 3.2 cm in diameter and weighing about 10.4 grams. That is, Daquan 1,000, which is actually only equal to 3.2 five-baht money, is forced to exchange 1,000 five-baht money.
Soochow Daquan five hundred
In 246 AD, Sun Quan's treasury was full and rich in money. But the people could not resist such exploitation, could not survive, and riots continued. The wrong monetary policy and years of conquest depleted the treasury of Wu, and because of the Shu-Wu connection, the two inflationary countries competed to devalue their currencies as a means of economic warfare to devalue their currencies in order to prevent a large loss of their currencies. In the copper-standard economic system, a copper coin weighing ten was minted as a large spring with a face value of 5,000 faces, and finally suffered its own consequences, and the people suffered miserably, which was also part of the reason why it was eventually annexed by the Wei state.
Portrait of Sun Quan
Three: Wang Anshi of the Song Dynasty changed the law
As early as the Song Ying Emperor, the huge military expenditure caused the money in the treasury to only go in and out, and it was empty after a long time. And the high miscellaneous expenses of the bureaucracy made the treasury overwhelmed, and the common people had a lot of taxes and taxes, and the burden was overwhelmed, which increased the influence of peasant uprisings and the power of powerful landlords. The peripheral environment is also not optimistic, and the nomads in the north are constantly harassed, which shows that at this time, there are internal and external troubles. Zhao Yan became suspicious of the "law of the ancestors" formulated by Emperor Taizu of Song and Emperor Taizong of Song.
The young Zhao is convinced that changing the law is the only way to alleviate the crisis. So he found Wang Anshi to change the law. The ambitious Wang Anshi advocated that Yao Shun's concise legal system should be emulated. Then came the famous "Young Seedlings Law", before which merchants lent up to 200%-300% of interest to farmers, and after the promulgation of this law, farmers could borrow from the state and the interest was only 20%, and the tax was returned in summer and autumn. This greatly restricts the exploitation of peasants by businessmen and certainly eases the pressure of peasants' debts, but it still brings great debt pressure to peasants. After the promulgation of this law, some local officials took the opportunity to raise interest rates for their own achievements, forcing the people to borrow, and making the people miserable. Even officials deliberately did not lend money to the people, resulting in the people only borrowing from large businesses, and at the same time making this policy not curb the problem of mergers.
Portrait of Wang Anshi
Later, the "Exemption Law" was introduced, and the labor of each household was rotated, and those who did not want to work were paid some taxes according to family conditions. This greatly reduces the time spent on peasant labor, ensures working hours, promotes the development of national production, and increases government revenue. But it is a heavy burden for poor households. Then he proposed the "Paddy Field Benefit Law" to encourage land reclamation and water conservancy construction, and then pay for water conservancy construction according to the level of wealth and wealth of local households, and can also borrow from the state and county governments. Unfortunately, the amount of water conservancy built has gradually become the performance evaluation standard for officials, and some local governments have forced the people to build water conservancy, increasing the burden on the people. The purpose of Wang Anshi's reform of the law was to enrich the country and strengthen the army, improve the situation of poverty and weakness in the Northern Song Dynasty, and safeguard the interests of the landlord class.
However, the policy has a bunch of drawbacks, one is to increase the burden of the people, and in the later period, there were a thousand peasant collective petitions in Tokyo to protest, and even a popular uprising in the later period. Second, the conservatives were opposed to Wang Anshi's change of law, because the change of law changed the interests of conservatives, deepened the contradiction between the law changers and conservatives, and even in the place where Song Zhezong used the law change to completely plunge the Northern Song Dynasty into partisan struggle, one of the reasons for the demise of the Northern Song Dynasty.
Fourth: Legal currency reform of the Republic of China
In 1929, when the United States experienced a major economic crisis, Roosevelt enacted the Silver Acquisition Act in June 1934 in order to save the domestic economy and make a deal with a state in the country's silver-producing regions, and the silver was nationalized in August of the same year. As a result, the price of silver could be rapidly raised, and those sources of silver could benefit greatly from it in exchange for the states' support for Roosevelt's reforms. The deal affected not just the United States, but the world. Silver from all over the world began to flow to the United States, and the world silver price began to rise sharply.
Silver Acquisition Act of 1934
The direct impact on China almost shook the national foundation of the national government, domestic prices began to depreciate wildly, agricultural prices plummeted, and industry and commerce also went into depression. In response to this, the National Government introduced an export tax and a balance tax on silver exports in October 1934. In November 1935, the National Government abandoned the silver standard system and promulgated the Law for the Implementation of Legal Currency Policy and the Measures for Converting Legal Currency. Unexpectedly, World War II and the War of Resistance Against Japan followed, and as the war progressed, the legal currency was seriously inflated.
Then World War II also broke out, Britain was beaten to death by Germany, the Republic of China was beaten to death by Japan, and the legal currency completely collapsed. In the early days of the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, fiat currency could barely be used as a currency, after all, at that time, only 1.2 billion fiat currency was issued. However, as the war continued, by 1938, the Nationalist government had issued an additional 2.3 billion. The Nationalist government used various means to carry out open plunder of the people, which caused the bureaucratic capital to swell rapidly during the War of Resistance. In particular, the four major families monopolized the national economy and issued a large number of currencies. By 1941, 15.1 billion fiat currencies had been issued. This is more than five times the inflation compared to the original issue of 1.2 billion. It used to cost one dollar to buy a steamed bun, but now it costs five yuan to buy a steamed bun. By 1945, fiat currency issued 556.9 billion, a full 387 times. For ordinary people, in 1937 100 French dollars could buy two cows, in 1945 they could only buy two eggs, and until 1948, they could only buy 5 billionths of a meter and two meters. The currency has depreciated significantly.
100 fiat purchasing power in different periods
Until the end of the Anti-Japanese War, the Liberation War broke out, which caused the Nationalist government's military expenditure to increase sharply and continued to lose money. Printing large quantities of fiat currency at military expense. As a result, prices rose wildly, the social economy of the Kuomintang-ruled areas faced a collapse, inflation peaked in 1948, the legal currency depreciated sharply, in order to save the economic crisis, it was only possible to maintain the military expenditure of the civil war, and decided to abolish the legal currency and issue gold coupons. On August 18, 1948, the government ordered a currency reform, replacing legal tender with gold vouchers, and forcing the exchange of gold, silver and foreign currency into gold vouchers. However, due to the hyperinflation caused by the indiscriminate outbreak, a large number of urban middle classes went bankrupt, resulting in a great loss of government popularity, which also became one of the reasons for the defeat of the Kuomintang in the civil war.
Golden Round Tickets
Conclusion:
The arrival of the four economic crises, most of the reasons come from the incompetence of officials, officials are so happy, for the sake of political achievements sacrifice the interests of the people, resulting in the failure of reform, people's emotions intensified and even rebelled, for ordinary people, usually develop the habit of saving, read more books to improve their skills, read more books to improve their skills, when the crisis comes, we should reduce desire, reduce the risk of leverage, prepare in advance, continue to maintain an optimistic attitude, reduce anxiety, the most important thing is to trust the decision-making level.
References:
Book of Han
Book of the Later Han
"General History of Chinese Mouth"
"Three Kingdoms"
History of Song
Silver Act
"No War in Beiping"
"The Biography of Kong Xiangxi"