At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty

"This... I never imagined that my younger brother would have such a talent."

In Cao Ang's mind, the Roman Empire was a superpower about the same size as the Wei Empire, and the emperor should be surrounded by talented people, so it was impossible for a 20-year-old kid like his younger brother to come out on top.

As a result, his younger brother not only became famous, but also became famous around the emperor, and even commanded the Roman army to win battles.

"Thinking back, when I first went to the battlefield with Master Lu, I was also in my twenties, but I didn't have the height of Cangshu."

Guo Peng smiled: "This time Cangshu has made great achievements. I don't know how Emperor Lou Mo plans to reward Cangshu. Will he be an official? I'm really looking forward to it."

"This... the Supreme Emperor, Cang Shu is from Wei, how can he be an official of Lomo Kingdom?"

Cao Ang was taken aback.

"It doesn't matter, at Cangshu's age, if he wants to achieve his current status in the country of Loumo in Wei, he can't even think about it in 20 years, but now there is an emperor of Loumo who is willing to provide him with this opportunity , Let him get the opportunity to exercise that ordinary people can't wait for, why not do it?"

Guo Peng waved his hand and said with a smile: "Zixiu, you don't have to worry that Cang Shu will stay in Lomo country and never come back. You are all in Wei country, and his relatives are all in Wei country. He will come back."

"But the Supreme Emperor, this is too..."

"Zixiu, the defeat of the Anxi Kingdom will have such a huge impact on us. Have you ever imagined that if there is a civil strife in the Lomo Kingdom, what impact will it have on our Southeast Sea Silk Road?"

Guo Peng put away his smile and looked at Cao Ang.

Cao Ang was startled.

"Your Majesty means that the country of Loumo..."

"According to the analysis of letters from ambassadors Wang Wei and Cang Shu, the current Emperor Loumo is not a peaceful person. He won such a big victory suddenly and his prestige soared. What will he do?

Now I'm not sure yet, but even if I can be sure, I'm beyond my reach and can't intervene. If Lou Mo breaks out, it's not a good thing for me, but Cang Shu may be able to do something. "

For some reason, Guo Peng always felt that Cao Chongzhi could do something in Rome.

He was helpless, thousands of miles away, beyond reach, but Cao Chongzhi was beside Caracalla, he might be able to do what Guo Peng could not.

Guo Peng can only look forward to this.

After listening to Guo Peng's narration, Cao Ang was deeply shocked.

He has never realized that the internal affairs of the Roman Empire, which is thousands of miles away, will also have a huge impact on the interests of the Wei Empire.

Is this what World Unicom is all about?

Cao Ang's heart was full of strange emotions.

The military and political officials of the Zhenxi Duhu Mansion are all Cao family members, and they are all relatives and generals, and they have a close relationship with Guo Peng, so there is no need to have too many restrictions on the dinner party.

Guo Peng took his family members to participate, and Cao Lan, as an elder, prepared a gift for Cao Ang and Cao Xiu.

The dinner was extremely joyful, and everyone gathered together to talk about many things in the past.

In the next few days, Guo Peng stayed at the Zhenxi Duhu Mansion. While taking his family to visit the scenery of Central Asia, he walked around and took a look around to collect materials for his "Book of the World's Commanderies and Countries' Benefits and Diseases".

The west gate of the empire must be well controlled, and the Silk Road will not be threatened if it is well controlled, otherwise the Silk Road will be threatened, and the situation in the entire Northwest will be corrupted.

Just before Guo Peng was about to leave, the economic crisis was fully charged, and finally broke out first in Zhenxi City, the capital of the Zhenxi Protectorate, which delayed Guo Peng's departure.

As a result, Guo Peng was able to personally experience the first economic crisis encountered by the Wei Empire.

Earlier, in order to encourage the development of the private economy, Guo Peng had allocated funds to the local branches of the Ministry of Finance to allow private self-employed people to borrow money from them to start small businesses.

Loans are issued with no interest or low interest, and they will be returned to the government when they make money.

Guo Peng tried to stimulate the development of the private economy.

This model has been maintained and has not been abolished. However, as many problems occurred and Guo Peng gradually tightened the restrictions on commercial development, the application threshold was gradually raised.

Even today, there are many folks who can take loans from the government, but the number has been greatly reduced, and it is almost impossible to apply for a loan casually.

The imperial court stipulated that there must be a clear reason, a detailed plan, and someone willing to guarantee them to ensure that nothing will happen, and then they can borrow money to avoid large-scale bad debts and bad debts.

Before the loan operation was immature, the application conditions were very low, and there were relatively large-scale bad debts in Yanzhou and Yuzhou that could not be disposed of.

Many people take loans just to take advantage of the loopholes, thinking that the imperial court gives out money for free, and of course they have to keep up with such good things, and use the money to eat, drink and play, spend time and wine, and do not operate at all.

There are also people who take out loans to operate, but the management is not good, and they go bankrupt soon, losing all their money and leaving nothing.

As for the implementation of the imperial court, due to the pressure from the superiors, they simply pursued the quantity, and did not strictly review it at all. As long as someone applied for it and looked decent, they would allocate the loan without checking at all.

So once the bubble burst and the repayment period came, the imperial court could not recover the loan at all and suffered heavy losses.

At that time, Guo Peng slashed at the Ministry of Finance for this matter, dismissed a large number of mediocre officials for dereliction of duty, and fined all the chief officials of the Ministry of Finance with three years of salary, but the financial loss has already been caused and cannot be recovered.

Guo Peng can't deprive those farmers of their land so that they become refugees. Although this is indeed the last resort to punish these people, Guo Peng doesn't have the heart to use it.

For matters involving ordinary people, Guo Peng's policies are always relatively mild, and he is also a lot of forbearance and restraint in his actions, which is completely different from the frequent yelling and killing of officials.

After careful consideration and introspection, he felt that the poor handling of this matter also had his own problems. It was because he failed to intensify the supervision and the regulations were not detailed, so that the officials' operations were simple and rough, which caused this wave of credit crisis.

In this wave, both the civil society and the government have suffered losses.

So in the end, it was Guo Peng who used the money from the internal treasury to pay for the Ministry of Finance and ended the credit crisis. He swallowed the bitter fruit himself and did not transfer losses to the private sector.

Since then, Guo Peng has become very cautious about granting loans.

He specified in detail that lenders must meet a series of conditions before they can be granted a loan.

For example, many guarantors, such as a detailed business plan, such as the tracking and direct accountability of local finance department officials.

Tighten the loan policy through a series of means to prevent the occurrence of bad loans and avoid large-scale bad debts from happening again.

Mr. Guo also has a lot of things to use in his internal treasury. At the moment when the finances are tight, this money, which is equivalent to the national reserve fund, cannot be used casually to support the policy.

The internal treasury has never been Guo's own small treasury, but Guo's confidence to bypass the court and forcibly promote certain policies.

In other words, it is also an extension of imperial power.

Chapter 1542 One thousand four hundred and sixty two thousand mistakes are the fault of the Anxi people

When governing the country, certain policies need to be promoted quickly and cannot be delayed.

However, it was put in the court to discuss the way of taking the national treasury, and it had to follow the laws and regulations set by Guo himself to conduct court discussions and decision-making, resulting in a lot of arguing and prevarication.

Once that time comes, someone Guo will directly use the internal treasury, bypass the imperial court, and directly let the cabinet or the inner court handle it, and forcefully promote the matter as the emperor.

At this time, the court has nothing to do with the emperor.

Because the emperor pays his own money, pays his own people, and handles things by himself, completely throwing you off and not taking you to play, what else can you do?

Money is the uncle.

Therefore, Guo Peng feels that he should be cautious in the state affairs of the state treasury, and not allow people to empty out the money in his internal treasury on a daily basis.

The result of this is that in areas where business development is discouraged, lenders have become very rare, almost none, successfully limiting the scale of business in these areas and bringing agricultural production back to the mainstream.

It can be regarded as a sort of order in a sense, ending the commercial chaos in some places for a period of time.

However, in areas where business development is encouraged, under the constraints of objective factors, even if the restrictions increase, the number of lenders will continue to increase.

For example, Yongliang and Liangzhou and the Western Regions.

The people in Yongliang and Liangzhou and the Western Regions were limited by objective factors and could not live the same life as the people in the Central Plains through agricultural production. They had to find another way to get enough food and clothing.

As a result, the rich set up restaurants and hotels one after another to make money from foreign trade and handicrafts, while those without money were jealous of seeing others make a lot of money, so they borrowed money from the government to set up restaurants, hotels, and engage in foreign trade and handicrafts.

Therefore, the total number of loans in this area is still quite large, at least compared to the less densely populated area of ​​Yongliang Western Region, the proportion of loans is still relatively large.

The imperial court has also been very concerned about this area. The Ministry of Finance has a large number of officials in the branches of Yongliang and Liangzhou and the three prefectures of the Western Regions. Basically, smart and capable officials are arranged in this area.

Taking advantage of the spring breeze of the great development of the Western Regions, many people made money. They stood on the cusp of making money, paid off their loans, and started making profits. They became the first people in this area to become rich.

The so-called pigs can fly while standing on the wind is pure violence. Even if they stand on the wind, they must have the ability to fly.

It is not enough to just fly, you must be able to maintain the flying posture, and you must be able to fly, or you will fall to your death directly.

Obviously, not everyone is good at running a business.

Some people make money and some people lose money, for different reasons.

For example, the cooking is unpalatable, the quality of the drinks is not good, the business environment is dirty and messy, the attitude towards customers is not good, they like to rip off customers and ask for more money, shoddy and so on.

Human greed can always be reflected in all aspects, which is amazing.

Of course, consumers are not fools. Voting with their feet can easily bring down these black shops.

So those black shops collapsed quickly, and the fallen shops were easy to deal with. As long as the loans were not repaid, the officials of the Ministry of Finance went directly to let them close down and go bankrupt, and then asked them to use their family's agricultural production to repay the loan.

Take out the contract signed at that time, supervise it from time to time, and pay back a sum of money every once in a while until it is paid off.

Their land is here, their family members are here, and monks can’t run away from the temple if they run away, and there will be no bad debts.

The black shops that have fallen down are easy to deal with, and those half-dead and barely operating are the most difficult to deal with.

Few customers come to the door, and if the management is not good, it will not be able to make money, and it will not be enough to make a profit even if it is barely maintained. The loan is repaid in installments bit by bit, which seems to be indefinitely.

Let it be closed, it is still alive, people don't want it.

Don't let it close, it's really uncomfortable to see it half dead.

As the westernmost territory of the empire and the administrative region most directly connected to Central Asian merchants, the Zhenxi Protectorate was the first to bear the chain reaction brought about by the war.

The reason why this matter is not very serious is mainly because the economic attributes of the Wei Empire are still dominated by self-sufficient agriculture, and there are only a few people engaged in commerce, which cannot affect the overall economic situation.

The bankruptcy of a few people will not affect the problem of eating for the majority.

The reason why this matter is very influential is of course certain.

Many small restaurants and hotels that were half-dead before could not survive the days when no one came to consume. The shops went bankrupt and closed, and they were unable to repay their debts. When there were too many such people, panic would arise.

The effects of the depression were felt quickly.

When no fewer than ten families came to the government for several days to inquire about related matters, some officials felt that something was wrong, so they reported the matter to Cao Ang. After Cao Ang learned about it, he immediately told Guo Peng about the matter.

Before that, Cao Ang had taken the lead in stopping the review of the establishment of shops, not allowing more shops to open, refusing to provide loans, and comprehensive restrictions. At that time, there was a wave of small public grievances.

But now it looks like, if it hadn't been done this way, there would be several times as many people in the Zhenxi Protectorate's Mansion asking about repayment after bankruptcy.

The problems covered up during the economic boom will be exposed once the economic depression comes.

As the saying goes, who is swimming naked after the flood, now it seems clear.

As time went by, more and more merchants could not survive, and the previous batch of half-dead shops basically collapsed.

Zhenxi Protectorate has five counties under its jurisdiction, and each county has relevant reports sent to Zhenxi City Cao Ang. In addition to Zhenxi City itself, in just five days, more than 130 merchants had financial problems.

Guo Peng took Guo Chengzhi with him and asked him to work with Cao Ang and help Cao Ang run errands.Let him experience for himself what it is like to experience the first ever export-oriented economic crisis at the national strategic level.

Guo Chengzhi is not the only rookie in this kind of thing.

Not only Guo Chengzhi, but everyone encountered and dealt with it for the first time. They were at a loss for such a situation and thought the end of the world was coming.

Many people were quite panic-stricken, and asked with horror on their faces whether they would be caught in prison to serve their sentences or have their heads beheaded, or whether they would be caught as coolies, and they would never be able to see their families again in this life.

Guo Chengzhi witnessed this scene with his own eyes.

There was a middle-aged man kneeling on the ground with a broken face, holding his two young sons and crying non-stop.

There was also a middle-aged man squatting on the ground with his head in his hands, crying "I don't want to die" while crying.

Several other men surrounded an official desperately begging for mercy, asking him to show mercy, not to take them into prison and behead them.

Men were crying, women and children were crying too, and the whole scene was full of crying.

And as time went by, more and more people gathered, and the entire government office had a tendency to become overwhelmed.

Inexplicable rumors have already appeared in the city, saying everything, such as some government conspiracy, some big man's conspiracy, some war is going to happen, some big trouble is going on, and so on.

Then those who borrowed government loans would go bankrupt and those who went bankrupt would die.

Anyway, rumors are buzzing.

Relevant officials of the Protectorate's Mansion urgently held a meeting and called the local branch director of the Ministry of Finance in charge of the matter to have a meeting together.

After research and research, there is no result.

When they went bankrupt, it was not only their own loss, but also the loss of the imperial court's finances. One family is a small amount that is not eye-catching, and more than 100 households added together is not a small amount.

If the spread becomes more severe and more merchants close down, then the number will be even greater, which is not something they can hold on to, and must be reported to the Central Ministry of Finance to attract the attention of the central government.

For that matter, the relevant officials of the entire Zhenxi Duhu Mansion have no good fruit to eat, and the officials of the finance department have no good fruit to eat. When the central government gets angry, it may not know how to deal with them.

The small traders outside were flustered, but they were actually even more flustered.