Seven Seas Beacon Fire

Therefore, a strange phenomenon can occur in India: the electronic devices you bring on vacation will be bought by the locals at the price of brand new. So, a little trick for exchanging rupees when traveling in India is that you can directly exchange your old, used mobile phone or camera for rupees at the equivalent price of brand new ones on the black market.

Today, Letania is even worse off than India, since in India, rupees are not used to buy things by weight. The Republic of Letania is facing a huge dilemma: as a country recovering from the war, it needs to engage in foreign trade, but Letania lacks the foreign exchange reserves necessary for trade.

For some resource-rich countries, even without enough foreign currency, they can barter directly through resource trade. Although prices may be driven down, trade can still be maintained.

The Ursus Federation currently conducts much of its trade through this method. Although the blockaded Ursus Federation lacks foreign exchange, it has very rich resource reserves.

It is known that even during the Russo-Ukrainian War in another world, the United States launched an unprecedented financial nuclear bomb against Russia in various aspects (of course, the result of this financial nuclear bomb made everyone realize that the concept of financial nuclear bomb itself is ridiculous), but it did not impose sanctions on Russia's natural resources exports.

However, as an industrialized country lacking sufficient resources, Letania has historically exported manufactured goods in international trade. What they need are precisely natural resources. Without these imported resources, many factories in Letania would not even be able to operate.

It's impossible for Letania to import resources from South American or Asian countries and then ask them to let it buy on credit, promising to repay the debt with manufactured goods after it's produced.

After all, some people sell you mines in exchange for money to buy grain, but all you can provide are tractors. Can tractors eat?

Li Che could see through the respectful attitude of these bankers in Letania that they were actually playing a big game, or as some might say, "playing a grand strategy."

Li Che was playing a "grand game" with these guys, but he wasn't entirely sure of the exact objective. However, he had a general idea of ​​the direction of their plans.

Zionism has been working on this for many years in every world, most recently during the previous world war, when these guys tried to buy land in Borneo from Colombia, hoping to gain a piece of land in Borneo that Colombia had conquered, a place where they could establish a new Jewish state.

However, all of these Jewish plans have failed to date. Even if the Tang Dynasty had failed to defend Borneo in the final stages of the last World War, it would have been virtually impossible for the Jews to establish a Jewish state on Borneo.

After all, the "grand ambitions" of those prominent Jewish figures have little to do with the vast majority of Jews in the world. Regardless of their country of origin or ethnicity, skin color or race, humans are essentially just living beings. Once life becomes truly prosperous and stable, most people don't have so many messy thoughts.

A wife, children, and a warm bed—these desires are the basic instincts of human beings.

Therefore, you can see that radicals in different countries are all kinds of different, but conservatives in different countries are often very similar.

For those prominent Jewish figures, by now they have probably discovered the biggest problem in the process of establishing their own state. While the land issue and the support of major powers are indeed difficult to solve, what is even more difficult to solve is where the citizens of the newly established Jewish state will come from.

I am just an ordinary Jewish family. We have settled down in a country. I have bought a house, gotten married, and my child is in school. My wife is an engineer and works at the post office. You want me to give up all of this and move with my family to a completely unfamiliar land to rebuild a country from scratch?

Are you crazy or am I crazy?

Not to mention, many Jews in Europe no longer even believe in Judaism. The Jews in Letania are already highly secularized, and the Jews in Ursus are even more remarkable. The Ursus Empire used to oppress Jews, so when the New School overthrew the Ursus Empire, many Jews joined the New School. In the eyes of Judaism, these Jews who believed in the New School are even more hateful than pagans!

How can we solve this problem?

In fact, throughout Eastern history, including Zhang Xianzhong, Li Zicheng, and all those bandits throughout history, they all had their own methods for solving problems.

If these people who have already achieved a stable life were to lose everything they have now and become destitute, they would be willing to leave their current country and land to go to the "new Jewish state" newly established by the Jewish leadership.

Therefore, after the necessary pleasantries at the beginning of the negotiations, Li Che quickly began to talk about his observations upon arriving in Letania.

At first, the bankers all smiled and agreed, but soon the major shareholders of the Leitanian Imperial Bank stopped smiling.

"...Speaking of which, Letania truly lives up to its reputation as the birthplace of the automobile. Having just arrived, I've already felt the depth of your country's automotive culture; even ordinary young people are incredibly dedicated to their racing careers..."

This statement is certainly a high level of emotional intelligence. There are no fools in this world today, so how could they not understand the meaning behind this high level of emotional intelligence?

The thought that the son of one of his branch managers had offended the Crown Prince of the Tang Dynasty made the director of the Leitania Imperial Bank feel extremely uneasy, because he had no doubt that the Crown Prince might choose to make an example of them and then intimidate the representatives of the other banks.

After all, the fact that the Crown Prince met with so many bank representatives today shows that he initially planned to use the 500 million loan to incite these banks to fight amongst themselves.

Otherwise, why would they meet with so many bank representatives at the same time? What is the purpose of commercial bidding? It's obviously for the client to have a group of contractors competing against each other!

Knowing what this person was planning was one thing, but they still had to come, after all, these were representatives of the banks. A significant portion of them were naturally acting in the "grand scheme" of those Jewish high-ranking officials, but for these companies themselves, they were also facing survival pressures at the moment.

Like the Kuomintang intelligence station in the TV series "Penetration," after the Japanese surrendered, was their primary concern intelligence gathering? No, their primary concern was solving the problem of food.

Under the grand goals of a large organization, small groups will naturally strive to maintain their own existence while achieving those goals.

"I think there must be some misunderstanding here..."

"How could there be a misunderstanding? In the East, there is a saying: 'A tiger father will not have a dog son.' I have heard that some of you here have some close ties with General Ludendorff... I don't know if the rumors are true or not, but if they are true, then you fathers are even more daring than those young people who race cars."

Charité Carlo, a director of the Leitanian Imperial Bank, twitched. It was both unexpected and reasonable that this grandson of the Eastern Crown Prince could pinpoint their current relationship with Ludendorff's far-right.

Unexpectedly, they did not expect that this newcomer, who was visiting Letania for the first time, would be so knowledgeable about the current situation in Letania. The connections between Ludendorff and his far-right faction with these Letanian bankers were very covert.

Because their funding based on Ludendorff was very limited.

What? You say you have a close relationship, so why is the money you're given so limited?

That's because these bankers aren't idiots; they know very well that if a group of violent people were to control a large amount of money, those violent people would quickly slip out of their control.

These Jewish capitals do indeed have a strong influence throughout the West; they are very covert and possess great potential power.

At the same time, this Jewish capital is very fragile. Even a powerful capital like Wall Street is just a roadside door in front of a president with real power. If Roosevelt could get those capitalists to pay 90% of their taxes, would those so-called capitalists dare to bare their teeth at Roosevelt?

As for the claim that it's reasonable, from the perspective of these people in this era, the Ming Dynasty in Nanjing possessed the world's oldest intelligence agency, and the Tang Dynasty probably inherited the Ming Dynasty's Jinyiwei (Imperial Bodyguard), so it's not surprising that they were exceptionally good at gathering intelligence.

It's like even if Britain had declined to the point where the Royal Navy was reduced to a mere six ships in another world, people wouldn't be surprised at all that MI6 could obtain some highly classified and important intelligence.

This is called matching the art style.

"Your Highness, to us Leitanians, General Ludendorf is, after all, a war hero, so we..."

"When did you Jewish elites start to think you actually belonged to a country? Ludendorff may be a hero to the Letanians, but what do they have to do with you Jews?"

Li Che's question brought the issue to the forefront, and Charité Carlo's expression quickly changed. If it was just a guess before, Charité Carlo was now certain that the Crown Prince had a clear understanding of their Zionist nationalism.

But is this reasonable?

The reason why Zionism has not made a significant splash worldwide or attracted the attention of any major power is mainly because the idea of ​​a prosperous nation advocated by the Jews is essentially similar in nature to Murong Fu's call to restore the Great Yan dynasty in the novel "Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils".

The Yan Kingdom that Murong Fu wanted to restore in Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils did not have an inch of land on the territory of the Song Dynasty (I really don't know whether this is an insult to Murong Fu or the Song Dynasty), and the Yan Kingdom he wanted to restore was already hundreds of years old at that time.

It's like if you shouted "I want to restore the Song Dynasty" during the Yuan Dynasty, you might get arrested; but if you shouted "I want to restore the Sima Jin Dynasty" during the Song Dynasty, everyone would just think you're crazy.

How long have the Jews been wandering the world? To be honest, in the eyes of other countries, the things that Zionists are planning are really ridiculous. In fact, apart from these Zionists, not many people take the efforts of Zionism seriously.

And the current Crown Prince seems to be the one who is acting out of character.

“Well, Your Highness, we do have some financial dealings with General Ludendorff, but we assure you that the total assistance we provide to them will not exceed £1.”

Ten thousand pounds—ha, that number sounds almost laughable. In many urban novels, even in today's currency, it seems insignificant.

However, right now, a sum of one or two thousand can really influence the course of a country's development.

That's really interesting.

“Then I demand that you completely stop providing funds to Ludendorff, and not give him a single penny until I give in.”

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PS: I will be at the BW event on July 12th. If you are also attending BW that day, you can try to find me there. If you see a guy walking around typing on his phone, it's most likely me.

Those who want to mess with me can start preparing for the next round.

Chapter 397 Shameless Bastard

Seeing Charlotte Carlo's somewhat troubled expression, Li Che tapped the table with his knuckles: "Mr. Carlo, I know you want to use Ludendorff to do something. I have no intention of ruining your plans, I just want you to temporarily stop the timetable. I want to make Ludendorff bow down, is that not possible?"

"Of course it can be done."

Charlotte Carlo forced a somewhat stiff smile. Some of the other Leitanian bankers present today could vaguely guess what was going on in his conversation with Li Che, while others were completely bewildered.

Isn't today's gathering a banking investment conference?

Why are Mr. Carlo and the Crown Prince of the Tang Dynasty talking about riddles?

Although there were doubts, no fool dared to step forward and expose the truth at this point.

After all, Mr. Charité Carlo, who controls the Leitanian Imperial Bank, is the one with a transcendent status in the Leitanian banking industry at this meeting.

Although the banks are essentially competitors, Mr. Carlo does not actually compete with them, because everyone understands that what Mr. Carlo values ​​is not on the same level as what others care about.

For most people, their bank is practically their entire business, but for Mr. Carlo, the Leitanian Imperial Bank is not his everything.

None of you here are fools, and you all understand that economic issues and political issues are often indistinguishable.

Looking at Mr. Carlo's expression, everyone secretly wondered what concessions he had made to the Crown Prince of the East.

In fact, it's fortunate that people in this era are still relatively simple-minded. If this were on Zhihu in another world, people would probably be speculating whether Carlo is selling his genitals.

Of course, for Charlotte Carlo, his grim expression wasn't because they were actually going to pay a huge price; in fact, he was even hoping that the other party would really ask for an exorbitant amount.

The Crown Prince's request was simple—to simply cut off economic aid to Ludendorff, or more precisely, to maintain this state of cut-off economic aid until Ludendorff backed down.

For the Presbyterian Church, this simply means that the original timetable scheduled for the end of this year may be pushed back a little. It's not a big problem at all. After all, the Jewish state has been gone from history for thousands of years. So many Jews have waited for such a long time, they don't care about waiting another year or two.

The problem is that the plans and schemes of the Elders were clearly no secret to the Crown Prince, which is terrifying. Just the thought that even the plans made by the Elders were not secret is a huge blow to Zionism.

After all, these people privately joked that no matter how well-dressed they were on weekdays, they were essentially a bunch of snakes and rats who couldn't stand the light of day and could only stir up trouble in the shadows.

Now, those who used to live in the shadows have been noticed by a truly powerful figure in the sunlight. Even though this powerful figure is not showing them any malice, it is enough to terrify the snakes and rats in the shadows.

How did this crown prince know these secrets within their council of elders?

Are the Embroidered Uniform Guards really that magical?

Could it be that this imperial grandson is truly protected by the gods? After all, he just predicted a divine punishment, even specifying the exact day.

Damn it, it would be better to let that Crown Prince squeeze them for money. The Elders' Council is so poor that all they have left is money. For the Elders' Council, problems that can be solved with money are basically not problems. What they fear most is problems like this where people don't want to use money to solve them.

Charité Carlo thought a lot, but he didn't have many options left, and for now he had no choice but to back down.

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Ludendorff soon realized that something was wrong.

Because the people who want to get back at him never intended to hide anything from the beginning. Even if you use a megaphone to shout to him or the whole world, "I'm going to target you now."

"Lucas said he can't give us money this month?"

While the Crown Prince in the East was meeting with people from the Lecanian banking industry, his own source of income was cut off. This kind of behavior—that you offend me now and I will retaliate on the spot—was almost undisguised.

"Yes, Mr. Lucas said he was also helpless; in the current situation, no one dares to offend that Crown Prince."

"Those damned bastards!" Ludendorff slammed his pencil down on the table in a fit of rage.

"We will hang these Jews one by one from the lampposts sooner or later. It was these Jews who instigated the sailors in Kiel to mutiny at the end of the war. Otherwise, we would have had a chance to win a decent peace like the Tang Empire! They destroyed the empire and now they want to betray us again!"

Ludendorff knew that the people he was dealing with were Jewish, but the Presbyterian Church would not use a public guise when dealing with someone like Ludendorff. Therefore, the financial support given to Ludendorff was all done through a small banker named Lucas.

Ludendorff naturally hated these Jews, but now he knew that if his far-right group wanted to develop further into a disciplined political party, it would cost money, and a lot of money at that.

It can be said that the limited financial assistance Lucas provided to them played an irreplaceable role at present.

Although he was furious, Ludendorff knew that getting angry wouldn't solve anything.

He truly hadn't expected the Eastern Crown Prince's response to be so swift and ruthless.

When Ludendorff deliberately stirred up trouble in parliament, he had already guessed that he might be targeted by the Crown Prince. As for whether he regrets it now, he probably does. He never expected the other party's response to be so swift and powerful, directly cutting off their economic resources.

However, if he could go back a few days, Ludendorff believed he would still make the same choice.

It appears that Ludendorff's actions were deliberately sabotaging the post-war economic recovery of the Republic of Letania.

After all, if you really anger this Crown Prince, he won't repay the 500 million loan! He'll just exchange the money for marks on the international foreign exchange market and repay you, and you won't even be able to say a word.

But Ludendorff had no regrets about it.

He has two reasons for not regretting it. First, while 5 million dragon coins are indeed important to Letania right now, they are not the most important thing.

Even if Lecania receives the full 500 million, its economy won't undergo a dramatic transformation. After all, no one knows whether the 500 million will stop losses in the market or be completely squandered, leaving nothing tomorrow.

The second point is rather selfish. If the current right-wing forces in Letania, led by Ludendorff, cannot obtain the 5 million, then it would be better if no one got the 5 million than if it fell into the hands of the Letanian Republic government and these banks.

"General, we can settle the score with these Jews later. What should we do now?"

"What should we do? That Empress Dowager actually wants to intimidate me with money, so we'll intimidate them with our voices!"

Ludendorff acted as if everything was under control, and his plan was actually very simple: he had his men and those around him organize a large number of idle Leitanian citizens to take to the streets to protest against the current Republic government, Mai.

At present, no one in Lycania has enough qualifications and prestige to unite the various forces in the country. Marshal Ludwig was able to rise to a high position after the war, perhaps because the Lycans saw a prince of the Ming Dynasty in the East regain his crown and lead a collapsing country to do everything in his power to force a draw in the endgame of the war.

Li Zongdi's actions, in every respect, are in perfect harmony with the values ​​of the Leitanians.

However, after Ludwig was elected, it was quickly discovered that this Field Marshal Ludwig was far inferior to the prince from the East. This resulted in no single political figure in the Republic of Letania possessing sufficient political power and personal prestige. They were therefore extremely afraid of public opinion and popular sentiment, because even a slight reversal in public opinion or a shift in public sentiment could be enough to strip those seemingly high-ranking figures of their power.

Even Field Marshal Ludwig was no exception.

Therefore, Ludendorff believed that as long as he could organize enough people to take to the streets, the Leitanian parliament would have no choice but to say no to Licher under his coercion.

Otherwise, they will be labeled as traitors.

Although it is reasonable and ethical for them to be willing to take out 500 million to repay the previous loan, compared with other countries, it can be said to be extremely kind and generous, but from the perspective of an ordinary Leitanian, can the marks when you were given the loan be the same as the marks now?

The current mentality of these Letanians is somewhat like that of homeowners who bought houses at high prices and are now facing a sharp drop in prices. When prices were rising, they were certainly unwilling to pay more, but when prices fell too drastically, these homeowners were definitely overwhelmed.

“But General, if we want to organize people to speak out, we need money, and it can’t be in Marks.”

Ludendorff's boastful words did not make his men lose their minds. Organizing people to do such a thing... that would cost money! And a lot of money!