Chapter 533 Expensive but not expensive

The Swiss bank has a long-standing reputation and is known as the world's safe. During World War II, Swiss banks not only absorbed a large number of Jewish deposits in the form of anonymous accounts, but also used their status as a neutral country to carry out countless secret transactions with Nazi Germany.

Before the outbreak of World War II, many Jews had large deposits in Swiss banks. Later, most of these people were killed in concentration camps in Germany, and their account numbers and passwords were also reduced to ashes along with them. As for the descendants of these depositors, they usually know neither the name of the bank nor the account number. Some just know that their father has property and often goes to Switzerland.

The Bank Secrecy Act makes wealth stored in Swiss banks as safe as in a safe. But another problem arises immediately: If a depositor deposits a huge sum of money anonymously in a Swiss bank, and then dies suddenly, without giving the bank a will, and having no chance to tell the family members the deposit password when he dies, then he will This deposit will stay in the Swiss bank forever and cannot be withdrawn.

In 1989, the chairman of the World Jewish Congress, Ajay Bronfman, went to Bern to negotiate with the Swiss Banking Association (ASB). Since then, ASB has established a set of procedures to find unowned property in banks through an intermediary in Zurich and require Its member banks provide property inventories. The results of this search were astonishing. A total of 775 unclaimed accounts were found, with deposits totaling $32 million. The World Jewish Congress estimated in advance that it was several billion dollars. However, when the scandal was revealed, the Jewish organization insisted on a one-time compensation of 1 billion US dollars. But the Swiss government and banks have only proposed two funds, a 15 million Swiss franc Holocaust memorial fund and a 7 billion franc solidarity fund. All profits from the operation of these two funds are used to compensate victims of the genocide.

During World War II, the police frantically plundered wealth for themselves. A 1945 report by the British authorities estimated the total value of the war spoils at between $54.5 billion and $550 million, roughly equivalent to $4.6 billion in today's dollars. But that figure only includes gold stolen by the government from the central bank vaults of occupied countries, and the exact number of personal property looted by the government will always be a mystery.

To deceive the public, the government recast much of the looted gold into ingots of nearly 400 ounces each.

Some are hidden in various parts of Germany and the Reichsbank, and others are hidden in banks in some other neutral countries. And the Swiss bank is the ideal safe for large sums of gold. Swiss banks made a real windfall after the war by hiding these unknown "gold gold".

With the "help" of the Swiss Bank, Hitler obtained valuable foreign exchange to purchase important materials to maintain the war on the world market, such as precious metal chromium, which is indispensable for making armor-piercing bullets, and tungsten, which improves the armor strength of tanks. In 1943, the Minister of Economics of the Communist Party of China, Funk, emphasized: "If Switzerland loses the foreign exchange channel, Germany will not be able to sustain the war for more than two months." The vice president of the Reichsbank simply stated: "Switzerland allows free foreign exchange. The deal was politically significant, and that's a fundamental principle of how we've kept it independent to this day."

In addition to public transactions, Swiss banks are also responsible for helping senior government officials preserve their private properties. At the end of World War II, the leaders of the Communist Party saw that the fall of the empire was imminent, and they transferred the ill-gotten wealth they collected to the Swiss bank vault, trying to rely on the protection of the Swiss "Bank Secrecy Act" to escape the pursuit of the allies after the war. After the war, it was accidentally discovered that Hitler's Air Marshal Goering, Minister of Economy Funke, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ribbentrop all had anonymous accounts in Swiss banks.

Before the end of World War II, the Swiss ordered the freezing of German accounts when they saw that Germany was doomed. In 1945, Switzerland signed an agreement with the Allies to clear all German property, but Switzerland insisted on maintaining independence on the issue of the gold valuation. Since the Cold War had just begun in 1946, the Allies not only needed Switzerland to strictly observe neutrality, but also needed Swiss banks to help with post-war reconstruction, so the United States persuaded Britain and France to accept Switzerland's position. As a result, Switzerland finally returned 60 million U.S. dollars to Britain, France, and the United States. According to the estimates of the Allied Forces, there are more than 500 million U.S. dollars in gold in Swiss banks.

After the "Gold Case" scandal was fully exposed, the reputation of Swiss banks was greatly affected: Switzerland's long-term efforts to establish a fair and humane image in the world have been completely tarnished. The asset management business of Swiss banks has shrunk, and many clients have withdrawn their funds. Some large retirement funds and public funds are no longer entrusted to Swiss banks to operate. In the competition with another international financial center, New York of the United States, Switzerland was defeated in terms of credibility and reputation.

Swiss banks are no longer trustworthy, and New York may also be involved in the subprime mortgage crisis and have problems. It is not safe to put it in your own safe, but it is much safer to put it in Gringotts.

In every war, there will be a lot of money missing. Gold and silver are interchangeable between wizards and Muggles. Similarly, Gringotts remains "neutral" like the Swiss Bank. According to the armistice agreement between wizards and goblins, there is no successor. All the gold in your vault will go to the goblin.

Severus also stashed some gold ingots in his Albanian bunker.

For the Potions Professor, earning money is not difficult at all. The reason why the Weasley family is so poor is because of Arthur. Something corrupt and perverted.

For a woman, she often chooses a capable man as her life partner. When he was young, Severus didn't look stable at all. According to ordinary people's thinking, he is not worth entrusting for life. He is the kind of medium and long-term potential stock. Short-term people don't have that patience and don't care about him at all. By the time I "understand" it, the opportunity has already been missed, and no matter how regrettable it is, I can only watch others make a fortune.

The Qing Dynasty signed nearly 200 treaties with more than 50 countries. After China declared war on Germany and Austria in World War I, China stopped paying boxer indemnities to these two countries. China, as one of the victorious countries, and Russia, the Soviet Union after the October Revolution exempted all the war and plunder during the Russian period. In May 1924, the Soviet Union announced the abandonment of Boxer indemnity. At the end of 1924, the U.S. government announced the second refund of the Boxer Indemnity, returning all remaining indemnities to the U.S. in full. In 1925, France, Japan, Britain, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and other countries all declared to return the balance of the indemnity, and entered into an agreement to use it for education and cultural undertakings in China, or for foreign bank operating expenses and issuance of domestic debt funds until the indemnity was paid When it was terminated in 1938, a total of 652.37 million taels of silver was actually paid in compensation, and the total amount actually returned by various countries was equivalent to 105.893 million U.S. dollars.

Eastern and Western civilizations are completely different. Stopping Westernization is good for everyone. If the homogeneity is too serious, there will be no diversity, and then there is no way for Eastern and Western civilizations to learn from each other.

In the history of currency, silver served as the standard currency earlier than gold, but in terms of currency stability, gold is far better than silver, and silver is easy to depreciate. The reason has been stable except for short-term fluctuations. After the discovery of the New World, a large amount of silver poured into Europe, causing inflation.

Precious metals were imported into Europe, but various materials did not increase. Coupled with the increase in population, the output of commercial agricultural products was insufficient, and prices rose sharply, especially food prices.

There are two groups of people who are severely damaged. Some are feudal landlords who collect fixed currency rents in the traditional way. Their real income is reduced by currency depreciation, and they fall into poverty and bankruptcy; the other part is hired workers in urban and rural areas. Interests, repeatedly promulgated laws and regulations to limit wage increases, resulting in wage growth that could not keep up with price increases.

The operators who benefit the most from the price revolution are the operators of commodity production, that is, handicraft workshop owners, capitalist farmers, new aristocrats who operate farms and pastures in a capitalist way, and wealthy tenant farmers who pay fixed currency rents. They can buy labor more cheaply and have a lot of products for sale.

For countries such as Britain and France, the price revolution had another effect, that is, it preliminarily straightened out the price system during the transition from a natural economy to a commodity economy. Therefore, in countries such as Britain and France whose domestic economic systems were able to carry out capitalist transformation relatively smoothly, the price revolution effectively accelerated the decline of the feudal system and the rise of capitalism, and promoted the development of the commodity economy.

For Spain, it is more complicated. Although capitalism in industry and commerce has also grown, the feudal structure is still quite tenacious. Facing the soaring price of agricultural products, the feudal nobles just blindly strengthened feudal exploitation, and the guilds in the cities continued to control the handicraft production. This made it difficult to develop domestic industrial and agricultural production in Spain, and the food produced was not enough to feed its residents. The wool produced was still exported to the Netherlands and Italy in large quantities, and the prices of industrial and agricultural products were even higher than those of the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands. The product lost its competitiveness in the market.

In addition, the Spanish Habsburg dynasty pursued a policy of dominating Europe, using huge wealth for military and political activities; the Spanish nobles spent a lot of money in pursuit of a luxurious life, which caused the gold and silver brought back from the American colonies to be transferred to other countries soon. The situation in the hands of the country's suppliers and creditors.

China is a country that lacks precious metals. Silver has always been imported from Japan. During the long period of more than 400 years from 1562 to the Edo period, the Iwami Silver Mine located in Ota City, Shimane Prefecture, Japan was the largest silver mine in Japan and the world. mine. Japan became one of the few silver-producing countries in the world, so much so that one-third of the world's silver was produced in Japan at that time, and Japan was called the "Silver Islands" by the Ming Dynasty.

During the Han and Tang dynasties, China has been implementing the gold standard, and it was not until the Ming and Qing dynasties that the silver standard began.

The amount of gold is very scarce in the world, and the continuous import of silver into China from Europe makes China's silver currency relatively sufficient. But there are advantages and disadvantages. Although the development of financial institutions such as pawnshops, banks, ticket banks, and banks promoted the economic development of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, inflation and deflation occurred alternately at that time, which led to economic turmoil. However, since China did not have the right to mine silver, the implementation of the silver standard forced people to exchange a large amount of physical goods for silver. As a result, the hard-earned wealth of the Chinese people gradually flowed to Europe.

In addition to guarding against Japanese pirates, the sea ban also guards against these European businessmen who want to open all ports, preventing them from plundering Chinese materials with silver dollars.

In 1876, due to drought, the crops on the Deccan Plateau failed. India is a monsoon country. The production of crops depends entirely on the arrival of the summer monsoon. If the summer monsoon comes early, it will cause floods, and if it comes late, it will cause drought. But the British colonial government in India often exported grain; during the famine, the governor-general oversaw a record export of 6.4 million tons of wheat to Britain, undermining southern India's food abundance and economic strength.

The Governor-General gave a grand banquet of 60,000 people to commemorate the coronation of Queen Victoria.

The grain commodity rate is the ratio of the amount of commercial grain sold to the total grain output. Its level depends on the relationship between people and land in a region. The grain commodity rate is high in a place with a large area and sparsely populated, and there are many Indians, but it was so high in 1876. The commodity rate of food in China is problematic, and the land in India is not only for growing food, but also for other cash crops. If there is a famine in the past, the rulers of India will quickly take measures to deal with the disaster. After the arrival of the British, it was the result of over-exploiting India's natural resources for their own economic interests. They were not concerned with the havoc wrought by the famine, but only with the taxation impact of the famine.

The first famine occurred in 1770, and it was quite serious. The Great Famine, which began in 1769 and ended in 1773, killed 10 million people, more than the Jews killed in World War II.

When the mass die-offs began in 1771, the East India Company instead increased the tax to 60% to compensate for the decline in the taxing population. A smaller working population leads to lower output, which means lower tax revenues. Those farmers who survived the famine were forced to pay double taxes to ensure that the British Treasury did not lose revenue.

During the Bihar famine of 1873-1874, serious deaths were averted by importing rice from Burma. Yet the Bangladeshi government and its deputy governor, Sir Richard Temple, have been criticized for spending too much on charitable relief.

For any accusations of oversubscription again in 1876, the Indian government's famine commissioner not only let loose in grain trade, but in more meager relief rations under strict eligibility criteria for relief. Covering the Madras region of southern India, an estimated 5.5 million people were killed, and the famine eventually covered an area of ​​670,000 square kilometers.

Indians are starving to death, but Britain is selling their food to ensure food security in the UK.

If civilians in the Ming and Qing Dynasties sold grain to foreign merchants in order to obtain silver, and the grain commodity rate was too high, it might threaten national security.

The food that was handed over was also fed to the army, so too much money was not a good thing. With the illiteracy rate at that time, they didn't understand what it meant at all. How could there be money that could not be exchanged for food?

"Sealing the country" is a kind of trade protection, and it also inadvertently closed the port. At least I have never heard of the Black Death spreading in the port cities of the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

Instead, it spread along trade lines in 1880.

The famine of 1946 was not caused by a natural disaster, nor was it caused by an irresistible force of nature or an enemy blockade. This famine was completely foreseeable and avoidable.

Thousands of people starved to death in crowded streets every day, and the British still did not allow newspapers to report on the famine, let alone the horror photos showing famine in newspapers. Although the streets of Calcutta were already littered with dead bodies, the life of the upper class people was not affected in the slightest. They still had a lot of fun at balls and banquets, showing off their wealth and living a luxurious life.

From March to July 1943, as many as 300,000 people died in the hands of the army because of food looting. Everywhere lay dead bodies, food for wild dogs, jackals, and vultures.

Aykroyd, a member of the British Council responsible for investigating the causes of the famine at the time, wrote in his memoirs: "In August 1943, on the railway from Madras to Calcutta. I left the carriage in a good mood and prepared to go to the dining car to enjoy Great breakfast, found the platform full of emaciated starving people, all of them sitting on the platform powerlessly. They originally wanted to take a train to Calcutta. But many of them simply couldn't stand up again, I can hear There they were, howling and making their last desperate pleas. My throat choked when I heard them, and I went back to the car."

Winston Churchill, who defeated the evil Axis powers, said in a cabinet meeting: "Whether there is famine or not, Indians will reproduce like rabbits, so what difference does it make if they are hungry or not?"

He continued to ruthlessly extract food from India, which he gave to the British army and Greek civilians, saying that "the malnutrition caused by starvation is not serious in Bengal, and their ability to starve is better than that of the Greeks."

So history is written by the victors.

Silver is a gamble. It can make a big fortune with a small amount. The market price fluctuates violently, and its low weight and price are not suitable for huge payments. Therefore, different countries have abandoned the silver standard one after another. However, after the subprime mortgage crisis broke out, silver is the direction of the largest capital escape.

It is really useful to read more books. This time the Chinese gangsters suffered a dark loss. It was a good idea for a while. How much more money can be earned by putting so many silver ingots in the investment market.

Planned spending is necessary, ammunition must be saved, and fortunately Severus has no intention of delaying the delivery, and he started working again after returning home from the market.

He was a "bad guy" with a conscience, so he almost died in the end. Good people don't live long, and it seems that the same is true of bad guys with a conscience.

This Australian fire, Sydney set off fireworks for New Year's Eve, other citizens are fighting the fire, poor koalas, a fire has become an endangered species, Australia has only people left, and there is still dry land, people living in the city are not at all I don’t feel the disaster around me, I continue to live my own life, and I don’t feel it until the disaster hits me, but at that time, it’s probably too late to escape