Rise of the Argentine Empire

After work, Saint Hesser did not go home, but came to Rosa's residence. The two little ones had just finished school. Andy is now 13 years old and already a humble young man, attending Blanca City Elementary School. He respects Uncle Cohen very much, much more than that old man who has long disappeared.

Leah is also a big girl, attending Plarrie International School, the most famous private school in Blanca City.

His and Rosa's illegitimate son, Planck Dylan, is cared for by a nanny. Dylan is Rosa's father's surname, and Rosa changed back to this surname after the divorce.

Planck is the result of a passionate encounter between Rosa and Saint Hesser. He is now almost 1 year old. The two little ones also like this new member of the family very much, and even think that their mother should have a few more younger brothers and sisters.

Saint Hesser insists on doing a lot of publicity to encourage childbirth, starting with children, influencing and changing social trends.

Until recently, Rosa still looked very young and graceful, but now, with age, her body seems to be getting plump.

In fact, Rosa is only thirty-three years old now, and she has been working hard to exercise and do some postpartum recovery. She is still mainly responsible for the management of Baron Bank, so the two are not simply lovers.

Saint Hesser stared at Rosa. She used to be lively and beautiful, but now she is a strong woman. He doesn't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but as far as managing Baron Bank is concerned, she is actually doing a good job.

"Cohen, you can actually smile more. You're not that old, but you look like a little old man."

Rosa is very gentle. She felt that Saint Hesser was in a low mood, so she kept joking, hoping that Saint Hesser could be a little happier.

I have to say that the credit bank incident has also given Saint Hesser a lot of profound lessons, and many of his subordinates that he valued were also involved, which made him a little disappointed.

"Haha, yes, when I think about it, I'm really not too old."

"You just worry too much…"

After eating and drinking his fill, Saint Hesser took a shower, got in the car and returned to his residence, his expression much more relaxed, releasing a lot of pressure.

Ilena was still waiting for him at home, and the two had another round of lovemaking before going to bed.

……

The financial destructive power caused by banks is actually also very huge. When industrial and economic development reaches a certain level, we must always pay attention to financial risks and must always be vigilant.

Under the leadership of Saint Hesser, the Ministry of Finance of La Pampa Province was responsible for drafting, and the Provincial Council passed the "La Pampa Province Banking Law Bill" with a high number of votes, stipulating various legal rules and regulations for the banking industry in La Pampa Province, sorting out the systemic risks of the banking industry, and securities laws and various market laws are also being drafted intensively.

Various systems in La Pampa Province are also gradually being improved. The value of laws and regulations is thus reflected, and it can also regulate the civil service team and the police department personnel. Although the external power of destruction is amazing, the internal corruption is often even more terrible.

Good laws and regulations do not need to force others to adapt, but guide others to learn and follow them, and then slowly change some bad things, and ultimately form a more standardized market.

And the ultimate beneficiary of a good market environment will only be all citizens.

Saint Hesser has been deeply rooted in La Pampa Province, forming a real Cohen Group. Most of the local families are relatively satisfied, because he also selects talents from local families and promotes them equally.

Most of the foreign talents are also satisfied. It is relatively fair here, and it is relatively fair whether they take the civil service exam or engage in business.

Saint Hesser's approval rating has soared, except for some lazy people and those who do illegal things.

In addition to doing a lot of practical things, Saint Hesser has also begun to adapt to some political showmanship. This is unavoidable. He cannot change this trend for the time being. Showmanship can make him more popular, and publicity can expose his popularity and various contributions.

Saint Hesser is not a perfect person, and an excellent leader does not need to be a perfect saint, as long as the work he does is in the interests of the people of La Pampa Province, that is enough.

On January 15, in the largest conference hall in Blanca City, La Pampa Province and Buenos Aires Province officially signed a joint market development agreement with six southern poor provinces including Río Negro Province and Neuquén Province. La Pampa Province will provide funds and personnel, and the remaining provinces will provide minerals and oil to jointly develop and advance and retreat together. It is a comprehensive agreement involving industry, agriculture, commercial trade, and immigration.

All the participants this time were the top leaders of each province, with extremely high specifications. The Minister of Economy of Argentina also participated in the hearing, and the Presidential Palace also sent a confidential secretary to participate.

This meeting is also known as the "Southern Development" of Argentina. The south of Argentina can't wait to get rid of poverty, and the industry in the north of Argentina also needs various southern industrial raw materials.

This is different from the development agreement led by Blanca City. La Pampa Province is obviously more qualified and more legal and reasonable.

In Saint Hesser's view, even mosquitoes are meat, not to mention that these southern provinces still have great potential, but they are just short of people. The oil in Neuquén Province and the Patagonia Administrative Region are tempting apples, waiting for Argentines to develop, rather than being plundered by the Americans.

The development channel for southern oil has been opened. Argentina still has enough oil to develop, bringing more sufficient funds for development. Perhaps Argentina lacks coal mines, but the oil potential is huge and may have world-class oil fields, but Argentina is unable to develop them, whether in the past or in the future.

To become a world power, you must at least have a world-class oil company, regardless of whether you have oil resources or not.

After all, this is the blood of industry.

Southern oil is expected to surpass several steel plants to become one of the top super companies in Argentina.

……

In order to ensure his control over the entire La Pampa administrative system, Saint Hesser prepared to establish a new secret intelligence agency within the Radical Party in La Pampa, the Pampas Investigation Bureau, to monitor the entire administrative system.

This investigation bureau is under the management of Saint Hesser himself, and people from the Administrative Office, the Defense Army, and the Radical Party of La Pampa Province are involved. All members come from within the Radical Party.

If the Falcon Intelligence Agency is Saint Hesser's external brain, then the Pampas Investigation Bureau will become Saint Hesser's internal brain.

The person in charge, Arthur, is Saint Hesser's capable assistant, Arthur Angel, the younger brother of Beste, the current deputy director of the Falcon Bureau. He has amazing talent and is also a graduate of the National University of Córdoba, a top student.

However, after graduating, Arthur has been working with his cousin Beste in the Falcon Bureau. Because of his excellent work and good education, he was promoted quickly and also served as the head of the European branch of Prarrie International.

He has always been an important figure in the International Intelligence Department of the Falcon Bureau, the Deputy Minister of the International Intelligence Department. The Beste brothers can almost be regarded as rare highlights of the Falcon Bureau, and have greatly helped Saint Hesser obtain international resources.

The International Intelligence Department has established branches in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Asunción, Sydney, New York, Washington, London, Paris, Santiago, Madrid, Tokyo, and Montevideo.

Arthur is mainly responsible for the organizational construction of the European branch of the International Intelligence Department. He has established a European branch in London. This weak area has established a series of commercial intelligence organizations and has made great contributions.

Saint Hesser didn't want to waste his talent. Last year, he transferred him to Argentina and asked him to take the Blanca civil service exam. He was directly appointed as the Deputy Minister of the Tax Department of the Blanca City Hall. He did an excellent job and made outstanding contributions to the tax reform of Blanca City. His current position is the Minister of the Tax Department of the La Pampa Provincial Government.

In addition to the Falcon Bureau, Saint Hesser also wants to establish an independent intelligence agency to serve him.

To be honest, he is not very satisfied with the development of the Falcon Bureau now, including Bill Bird, Guerrero and others, even Dante Rezel, are only maintaining the development of the Falcon Bureau.

None of them have the experience of establishing a large intelligence agency, even the current head of the Falcon Bureau.

Arthur is a good seed. He is almost the most educated person in charge of the entire Falcon Bureau, and his ability and loyalty are extremely outstanding. He is also humble.

"Don't waste your talent, Arthur. You are born to be an intelligence officer, even more outstanding than the head of the Falcon Bureau."

"Yes, Your Excellency High Official."

Saint Hesser wants to control his own power. The Radical Party is definitely the most important part. He established the "Southern Association" in the Radical Party. Here are the heads of the city-level organizations south of La Pampa Province. It is also the core composition. Secret meetings are organized regularly. Many people are loyal to Saint Hesser and are his loyal supporters.

And Saint Hesser's real backing is the people of La Pampa who support him. He has already begun to truly enjoy the pleasure of a group of people working towards the same goal, which cannot be compared with simply making a few dollars.

……

The winter sun rises slowly. Saint Hesser is bathed in the sunlight and does not feel too cold. The weather seems to have begun to clear today, and the construction sites in Blanca City have begun to become more busy.

Compared to the bustling and lively downtown area of ​​Branca City, the remote suburbs of Medanos along the coast are full of desolation and dilapidation, but it won't be desolate for too long.

The Medanos District is the most backward and impoverished district in Branca City. It used to be a poor town in the south of Buenos Aires Province and the capital of Medanos County.

In fact, the environmental conditions here are very good and it is also very suitable for building ports, but at that time Branca City had no intention of helping the little brother.

Saint Hesser advocates the establishment of large enterprises and large municipal governments, so grasping the big and letting go of the small is his basic approach. At the same time, he also catalyzes potentially competitive companies. La Pampa Province cannot fully compete with countries with tens of millions of people, but it can integrate several or even a dozen competitive large companies.

The concept of a metropolitan area is also the same. A small town will definitely not be able to compete with a big city, so if I merge 20 small towns into a small city, it will still be a bit competitive.

The Second Construction Company will build a huge residential area here, including 100 tube-shaped buildings, which can accommodate 30,000 workers' families.

Next to the residential area is a super-large construction site, where large blast furnaces are being built.

This is the location of the Medanos Steel Plant, located on the west coast of Branca Bay. The scale is almost the same as that of the La Plata Steel Plant, but the technology is more advanced and it is completely Argentine local technology.

In recent years, Argentina's steel smelting technology has improved rapidly, even greater than the progress of the past 100 years, and has gradually approached the world's advanced level.

Through exchanges of steel technology with Belgium, Austria, Italy, the Federal Republic of Germany, and Japan, which is developing rapidly, great progress has been made, and steel smelting technology has begun to be exported on a small scale.

For example, the Uruguayan military presidential palace found someone to connect with Saint Hesser himself, who was behind the La Plata Steel Plant, hoping to build a steel plant in Montevideo. Saint Hesser repaid the iron ore project in the Thirty-Three Province and agreed to help Uruguay build a medium-sized steel plant with an annual output of 500,000 tons, thereby strengthening its network of relationships in Uruguay.

The increasingly prosperous economy of La Pampa Province makes Buenos Aires Province and Cordoba Province jealous, while the economy of La Pampa Province increases steadily every year. In the national economic survey data, the economic scale of La Pampa Province is only 68% of that of Cordoba Province, but in reality it has exceeded Cordoba Province by 50%, comprehensively suppressing the economy of Cordoba Province.

Moreover, most of the economy is achieved through the development of industry, rather than the lucrative animal husbandry and agriculture. This is extremely rare in Argentina and is almost an impossible miracle.

Saint Hesser has accumulated Argentina's only heavy chemical industry base bit by bit. He ignited the fire of Argentina's industrialization. It may be weak, but it grows tenaciously.

Southern Petroleum Company's petrochemicals, Maya Chemical's fertilizers, various chemical raw materials, the two major steel plants' steel metallurgy, shipyards...

The US Central Intelligence Agency has vaguely begun to regard Saint Hesser as a threat. In the eyes of the Americans, Latin America is his backyard, and the three rapidly developing thorns must be suppressed.

Whether it is Brazil, Mexico, or Argentina, they are all hostile to the United States, and these three countries all have the potential to become world powers, but they have basically been ruined by the Americans: Mexico's flour, Brazil's slums, and Argentina's inflation.

Branca City has been transformed from ancient to new. Its status was not low in the first place, otherwise the National Southern University would not have been established here.

The cattle herds lost in the La Plata region by the failed Spanish colonists in the first half of the 16th century bred freely. By the mid-17th century, the number of ownerless wild cattle herds had reached as high as one million.

These moving gold attracted countless Spanish people from the mainland or Paraguay. Many people who discovered the cattle herds became rich overnight, and the production of leather and tallow in Buenos Aires also greatly increased. This is the origin of Argentine industry, but it did not create a powerful country, but more like a nouveau riche, full of fat but no muscle.

Argentina is a large piece of fat in the eyes of the Americans. Now the military government, which has no ability to govern, and the pro-American Radical Party have formed such a bizarre administrative system.

The Radical Party is not a good Argentine political party either.

Because Americans have never been saviors.

Being pro-American will not change Argentina's situation.

In fact, Saint Hesser prefers the ideals of the Justicialist Party, but the Justicialist Party is too useless and is not a modern political party at all.

The other Socialist, Republican parties are even more naive, or rather, too dogmatic. They copy foreign countries and do not pay attention to Argentina's national conditions, and they regard capitalists and the military government as too kind.

……

The new presidential election will be held this year. The Radical Party has not proposed any economic reforms and hopes more for the United States. At most, it will only make minor repairs to the Argentine economic system and has not put forward any constructive opinions.

This is why Saint Hesser does not want to go to Buenos Aires in the short term. The economic reforms in La Pampa Province have not spread to the whole country.

On the surface, the doubling of La Pampa Province's national product in five years should be attributed to the strengthening of competition and the enhancement of confidence, as well as the resulting increase in investment and progress in productivity, especially the innovation of the financial system.

But in reality, it is more due to the crazy expansion of state-owned capital and private capital, mainly the Cohen Consortium, which has driven the development of other private capital and a little foreign capital.

However, the Saint Hesser Group has indeed carried out a large number of economic reforms, carrying out reforms and innovations under the Argentine Constitution, making this the most economically active place in Argentina.

This cannot be separated from Saint Hesser's own prestige. In 1953, public sector employees in La Pampa Province accounted for 14% of the total number of employees in the province. By 1958, it had increased to 28%, but this did not cause the provincial government to become bloated. On the contrary, many civil servants were diverted in large numbers.

Saint Hesser carried out a streamlining plan, and the Radical Party also became an elite party, at least within La Pampa Province, as did the La Pampa Civic Union.

Public sector employees are included in the statistics because the companies under the State-owned Assets Committee are also included. These employees are called national public service units, which account for approximately 18% of the total.

The scale of state-owned companies under the province has expanded hundreds of times. Originally, there were basically no state-owned companies, and the scale of investment has exceeded that of the Cohen Consortium. Becoming a wealthy consortium is no longer Saint Hesser's dream.

In fact, the most amazing data is the increase in the total expenditure of the La Pampa Provincial Government, including expenditures on purchasing consumer products and services and purchasing capital goods (such as factory buildings and equipment). During the same time span, the proportion of expenditure to gross domestic product increased from 12.5% in 1955 to 38.4% in 1957, followed by 21.8% for the Cohen Consortium and 27.6% for the Branca City Government.

The corresponding data is the proportion of state-owned enterprises in La Pampa's economy, which combined reached a scale of 50%, La Pampa Provincial Government 17.7%, Cohen Consortium 24.4%, and Branca City Government 29.2%. This is already very amazing data.

It is no wonder that some people joked that, as if overnight, La Pampa Province became an outstanding representative of socialist development in South America.

Many countries in Western Europe have also begun to establish huge state-owned economies, with France being one of the best, and the United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy all developing well.

The most prominent manifestation of the economic reform in La Pampa Province this time is the expansion of tax sources and the continuous increase in tax revenue, most of which comes from the legal tax payments of state-owned companies. Thanks to the advanced development results, the scale and efficiency of state-owned companies continue to expand, and the industries involved are also increasing.

In order to protect the fragile private economy, tax police turn a blind eye to new factories and companies that can increase employment. These are seedlings that need to be protected. Once the company reaches a certain scale, it needs to start operating legally. At this time, there are a lot of high-quality support policies and tax rebate policies waiting for you, which are even lower than the operating costs of tax evasion.

In this way, the wage level in La Pampa Province is higher than that in other provinces, even exceeding Buenos Aires Province, second only to the capital Buenos Aires. The collection of personal income tax is also more relaxed, and the tax threshold is higher. A large number of citizens still do not pay taxes, which can be regarded as a kind of social welfare.

In order to ensure the birth rate and have more children, Saint Hesser does not encourage adult women to join the workforce early, but in order to guarantee women's rights, he greatly skewed the protection of women in the marriage law. Housework is regarded as work, and if there is a divorce, it tends to protect women's contributions.

One of the most unique phenomena in La Pampa Province is that there are particularly many male workers and middle-aged female workers in textile and garment factories.