Harry Potter’s Morning Light

   Chapter 533

  Swiss Bank has a long-standing reputation and is known as the world safe. During World War II, Swiss banks not only used anonymous accounts to absorb large amounts of Jewish deposits, but also used their status as a neutral country to conduct countless secret transactions with **Germany.

  Before the outbreak of World War II, many Jews had large deposits in Swiss banks. Later, most of these people were brutally killed in concentration camps in Germany, and their account numbers and passwords were 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 people just know that their father owns property and often goes to Switzerland.

  The Bank Secrecy Act makes wealth stored in Swiss banks as reliable as if they were in a safe. But another problem immediately arises: if a depositor deposits a large sum of money anonymously in a Swiss bank, and then suddenly passes away, he did not give the bank a will during his lifetime, and he did not have the opportunity to tell his family the deposit password when he died. This deposit of s will stay in the Swiss bank forever and cannot be withdrawn.

In 1989, the President of the World Jewish Congress, Eger Bronfman, personally went to Bern to negotiate with the Swiss Association of Banks (ASB). After that, the ASB established a set of procedures to find unowned assets in banks through an intermediary agency in Zurich, and requested Its member banks provide a list of assets. The results of this search were astonishing. A total of 775 unclaimed accounts were found. The total deposits amounted to 32 million U.S. dollars in advance estimates made by the World Jewish Congress, but it was several billion U.S. dollars. However, when this scandal was revealed, the Jewish organization insisted on a one-time compensation of 1 billion U.S. dollars. However, the Swiss government and banks only proposed to establish two funds, one is the Holocaust Memorial Fund of 15 million Swiss francs, and the other is a solidarity fund of 7 billion francs. All profits from the operation of these two funds are used to compensate the victims of genocide.

  During World War II**, he robbed himself of wealth frantically. According to a report by the British authorities in 1945, the total amount of military spoils was between 54.5 billion and 550 million US dollars, which is almost equivalent to today's 4.6 billion US dollars. But this figure only includes the gold stolen from the vault of the central bank of the occupied country, and the exact number of personal property looted by the police is always a mystery.

  In order to conceal people’s eyes, ** recast most of the looted gold into nearly 400 ounces of gold ingots each.

  One part is hidden in various parts of Germany and the Reich Bank, and the other part is hidden in the banks of some other neutral countries. And Swiss Bank is the ideal safe for large sums of gold. The Swiss Bank made a fortune after the war by concealing these unknown "**gold".

  With the "help" of the Swiss Bank, Hitler obtained valuable foreign exchange to purchase important materials for the maintenance of war on the world market, such as the precious metal chromium that is indispensable for making armor-piercing bullets, and tungsten to improve the strength of tank armor. In 1943, the Minister of Economic Affairs Funk emphasized: “If Switzerland loses its foreign exchange channel, Germany will not be able to sustain the war for more than two months.” The Deputy Governor of the Reichbank simply stated: “Switzerland allows free foreign exchange. Transaction has important political significance, which is a basic principle that we still keep it independent."

  In addition to corporate transactions, Swiss Bank is also responsible for helping ** senior officials save private property. At the end of World War II, the leaders of the Communist Party saw that the empire was about to fall, and they transferred the ill-gotten wealth they found to the vault of the Swiss Bank in an attempt to escape the recovery of the allies by relying on the protection of the Swiss "Bank Secrecy Act" after the war. After the war, people accidentally discovered that Hichler’s Air Force Marshal Goering, Economic Minister Funk, and Foreign Minister Ribbentrop all had anonymous accounts with Swiss banks.

  Before the end of World War II, the Swiss saw that Germany was exhausted and ordered the freezing of German accounts. In 1945, Switzerland and the Allies signed an agreement to check all German property, but Switzerland insisted on maintaining its independence on the issue of the valuation of this gold. Since the Cold War had just begun in 1946, the allies needed not only Switzerland to maintain its neutrality, but also the Swiss Bank's help in post-war reconstruction. Therefore, 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 estimates by the Allied Forces, Swiss banks co-existed more than 500 million U.S. dollars in gold.

  After the "**gold case" scandal was fully uncovered, the reputation of the Swiss bank was greatly affected: Switzerland's image of justice and humanity established in the world after long-term efforts has been completely tarnished. The asset management business of Swiss banks has shrunk, many customers have withdrawn funds one after another, and some large retirement funds and public funds are no longer entrusted to Swiss banks. Switzerland was defeated in terms of credibility and reputation in the competition with New York, another international financial center.

  Swiss banks are no longer credible, 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. If you put it in Gringotts, you will be more insured.

Every time there is a war, there will be a lot of money missing. Gold and silver are interoperable between wizards and Muggles. Similarly, Gringotts also remains "neutral" like Swiss Bank. According to the armistice agreement between wizards and fairies, there are no heirs. The gold in his vault will be owned by the fairy.

  Severus also hid some **gold ingots in the bunker in Albania.

For the Potions Professor, it is not hard to make money. The Weasley family is so poor because of Arthur's problem. He is the kind of person who takes the dead salary from the Ministry of Magic to support his family, and occasionally uses his position to do it. Something about corruption and perverting the law.

  For a woman, she often chooses a capable man to be her life partner. When he was young, Severus looked unstable at all. According to ordinary people, he is not worth entrusting for life. He is the kind of medium-to-long-term potential stock. People who do short-term do not have the patience and would not care about him at all. By the time I "understood", the opportunity was already missed, and no matter how sad I was, I could only watch others earn money.

  The Qing Dynasty signed nearly 200 treaties with more than 50 countries. After the First World War China declared war on Germany and Austria, China stopped paying indemnities to these two countries. China, as one of the victorious countries, Russia's Soviet Union after the October Revolution exempted all war plunder during the Russian period. In May 1924, the Soviet Union announced that it would waive the Boxer indemnity. At the end of 1924, the U.S. government announced the second refund of the Boxer Indemnity, and all the remaining indemnities to the United States were refunded in full. In 1925, France, Japan, Britain, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and other countries declared to return the balance of the indemnity and entered into an agreement to handle education and cultural undertakings in China, or for the operating expenses of foreign banks and the issuance of domestic debt funds, until the indemnity was paid By the end of 1938, the actual indemnity was 652.37 million taels of silver, and the total amount of actual refunds in various countries was equivalent to 105.893,000 U.S. dollars.

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

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 easily depreciated. In the hundreds of years before the 16th century, prices in Western Europe were not due to wars or poor harvests. 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, resulting in insufficient production of commercial agricultural products, and sharp increases in prices, especially food prices.

  Two groups of people were seriously injured. One part is the feudal landlord who collects fixed currency rent in the traditional way. Their actual income is reduced due to currency devaluation, and they fall into poverty and bankruptcy. Interests, and repeatedly promulgated laws restricting wage increases, resulting in wage growth not keeping up with price increases.

  The most profitable in the price revolution are the operators of commodity production, that is, manual workshop owners, capitalist farmers, new aristocrats who operate farms and pastures in a capitalist manner, and wealthy tenant farmers who pay fixed currency rents. They can buy labor more cheaply, and they have a lot of products to sell.

  For countries such as Britain and France, the price revolution has another effect, which is to initially straighten out the price system during the transition from a natural economy to a commodity economy. Therefore, in countries such as Britain and France where the domestic economic system can carry out capitalist transformation more smoothly, the price revolution has 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. In the face of soaring prices of agricultural products, the feudal aristocracy just stepped up feudal exploitation blindly, and the guilds in the cities continued to control industrial production. This has made it difficult for Spain’s domestic industrial and agricultural production to develop, and the food produced is not enough to feed its residents. The wool produced is still exported to the Netherlands and Italy, and the price of industrial and agricultural products is even higher than that of similar products in the United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands. The product has lost its competitiveness in the market.

In addition, the Habsburg dynasty of Spain pursued a policy of dominating Europe and used huge wealth for military and political activities; the Spanish aristocracy spent a lot of money in pursuit of luxury life, which caused the gold and silver returned from the American colonies to be quickly transferred to other countries. The situation in the hands of the country’s suppliers and creditors.

China is a country lacking precious metals. Silver has always been imported from Japan. During the long 400 years from 1562 to the Edo period, the Ishimi Silver Mine 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 that at that time one-third of the world's silver was produced in Japan, and Japan was called the "Silver Islands" by the Ming Dynasty.

  In the Han and Tang dynasties, China has always implemented the gold standard, but the silver standard did not begin until the Ming and Qing dynasties.

  The amount of gold is scarce in the world, and Europe is continuously importing silver from China, making China's silver currency relatively abundant. But there are advantages and disadvantages. Although the development of financial institutions such as **** shops, bank houses, bill houses, and bank accounts promoted the economic development of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the alternating occurrence of inflation and deflation at that time led to economic turmoil. However, because China does not have the right to mine silver, the implementation of the silver standard forces people to exchange large amounts of physical objects for silver. The consequence of this is that the hard-earned wealth of the Chinese people gradually flows to Europe.

In addition to preventing Japanese pirates,   sea bans must also guard against European merchants who want to open all ports to prevent them from looting Chinese materials with silver dollars.

  Drought in 1876 led to a lack of crops in the Deccan Plateau. India is a monsoon country. The production of crops depends entirely on the arrival of the summer monsoon. The early summer monsoon will cause floods, and the late summer will cause drought. But the British colonial government in India often exported food; during the famine, the governor supervised the export of a record 6.4 million tons of wheat to the UK, which weakened the abundant food and economic power of southern India.

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

The grain commodity rate is the ratio of the quantity of commodity grain sold to the total grain output. Its level depends on the relationship between people and land in a region. The commodity rate of grain is high in places with large areas and sparsely populated areas. India has more people and land, but it was as high as in 1876. The country’s food commodity rate is problematic, and India’s land is not just for growing food, but also for other cash crops. If there is a famine, the former rulers of India will quickly take measures to deal with disasters. After the arrival of the British, they were the result of over-exploitation of India's natural resources for their own economic interests. They don't care about the severe damage caused by the famine, and their only concern is the impact of the famine on taxes.

  The first famine occurred in 1770, when the situation was quite serious. The great famine began in 1769 and ended in 1773, killing 10 million people, more than the Jews slaughtered in World War II.

  When the mass death began in 1771, the East India Company increased the tax to 60% to compensate for the decrease in the taxed population. The reduction in the working population leads to lower output, which means lower taxes. Those farmers who survived the famine were forced to pay double taxes to ensure that the revenue of the British Treasury would not decrease.

  During the Bihar famine from 1873 to 1874, serious deaths were avoided by importing rice from Myanmar. However, the government of Bangladesh and its deputy governor, Sir Richard Temple, have been criticized for spending too much on charitable relief.

  For any excess accusations that occurred again in 1876, the Famine Commissioner of the Indian government not only let the grain trade go unnoticed, but also imposed strict relief eligibility criteria for more meagre relief rations. Covering the Madras region of southern India, an estimated 5.5 million people died, 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 Britain.

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

  The grain handed in is still for the army, so too much money is not a good thing. With the illiteracy rate at that time, they didn’t understand what this meant. How could they not get the grain if they had money?

   "Close the border and lock the country" is a kind of trade protection, and it also inadvertently played the role of closing the port. At least I have never heard of the Black Death spreading in the port cities of the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

Instead,    spread along the trade line in 1880.

  The famine in 1946 was not caused by natural disasters, nor was it caused by irresistible natural forces or blockades by enemies. The famine was completely predictable and avoidable.

  Thousands of people starve to death in crowded streets every day. The British still do not allow newspapers to report on famines, let alone horrible photos showing famines in newspapers. Although there are already corpses on the streets of Kolkata, the lives of people in the upper class have not been affected in the slightest. They still have a lot of fun at dances and banquets, show off their wealth, and lead 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. There were dead bodies everywhere, which became food for wild dogs, jackals, and vultures.

At the time, Aykroyd, a member of the British Council to investigate the cause of the famine, wrote in his memoirs: “In August 1943, on the railway from Madras to Kolkata. I originally left the carriage in a good mood and prepared to go to the dining car to enjoy After a good breakfast, I found that the platform was crowded with haggard and hungry people. All of them were helpless sitting on the platform. They originally wanted to take a ride to Kolkata. But many of them simply couldn't stand up anymore, I could hear They were there screaming and making their last desperate plea. Hearing their screams, my throat was hard to swallow, and I returned to the carriage."

  The Churchill who defeated the evil Axis State said at the cabinet meeting: “If there is a famine, Indians will reproduce like rabbits, so what is the difference if they are hungry or not?”

  He continued to squeeze food ruthlessly from India, and gave the food to the British army and Greek civilians. He said, “The malnutrition caused by hunger is not serious in Bangladesh, and their ability to endure hunger is stronger than the Greeks.”

  So history is written by victors.

  Silver is a gamble. It is able to make big gains with small gains. The market price fluctuates sharply. In addition, the price is low and it is not suitable for huge payments. Therefore, different countries have abandoned the silver standard. However, after the subprime mortgage crisis broke out, silver is the biggest capital escape direction.

  It’s really useful to read more books. This time the Chinese gang suffered a dark loss. The picture is refreshing. How much more money can be made by putting so many silver ingots in the investment market?

  It is necessary to plan expenditures. The bullets should be saved. Fortunately, Severus did not intend to delay the delivery. After returning home from the market, he started to work again.

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

In this Australian fire, Sydney set off fireworks for the New Year, and other citizens were fighting the fire. Poor Koala, a fire became an endangered species, Australia’s bare people were left, and there was still arid land. The people living in the city were not at all. I can’t feel the disaster around me, and continue to live my own life. I won’t feel it until the disaster reaches my head, but it’s a pity that it’s too late to escape.

  (End of this chapter)