Chapter 1912 Sorry for Being Late

"...Thus, the famous salt banknote method in history appeared.

The imperial court issued salt banknotes, and merchants spent money to buy salt banknotes. The salt banknotes recorded the output of salt and the price at which the merchants could sell it.

However, the good times did not last long, and this salt banknote method soon encountered problems again.

The problem lies in the excessive issuance of salt banknotes.

Guarding such a wealth-generating treasure, the court certainly hopes to earn as much as possible. Since it wants to earn more, of course it has to print more salt banknotes.

However, as too many salt banknotes were printed, this system naturally became ineffective. Therefore, in the late Northern Song Dynasty, the concept of salt banknotes was proposed.

The person who proposed this system, needless to say, must be one of the Four Thieves, Cai Jing and Cai Guanren!

As a famous treacherous official in history, coupled with the image of the monster depicted in Water Margin, Cai Jing has always been notorious in history, but regardless of whether he is a treacherous official or not, the salt introduction system proposed by him is very It works.

From this perspective, as prime minister, he has accomplished nothing~"

Yang Yuanshan said with a dark face, "Don't talk about all that nonsense, just talk about the main point~"

"Okay, the salt quotation proposed by Cai Jing is a reform of the previous salt banknotes. Originally, the salt banknotes only indicated the price and quantity of salt, and there was no expiration date. In other words, after the salt dealer bought the salt banknotes, , you can completely hoard goods and control the price of salt to a certain extent.

But Yan Yin is different. After Cai Jing's reform, Yan Yin is divided into long Yin and short Yin. Long Yin sells outside the market, and short Yin Yin sells the main road. The most important thing is that this thing has a time limit. Long Yin Yin One year is a short period of three months, and the quantity and price of transportation and sales are limited.

Isn’t this the prototype of futures?

You must know that the essence of modern futures trading is actually everyone's expectations for future supplies, because for some commodities, there will be a long time between production and sales. The price of this thing may be different when you produce it and when you sell it. .

Therefore, in modern futures, a price is often agreed upon first to trade these materials.

The salt banknotes at that time may have different prices when they were bought and sold. From this point of view, they already had the characteristics of modern futures.

With this salt introduction system in place, the sales of broken promises finally brought huge profits to the country.

According to some historians,

Military expenditures in the early years of the Southern Song Dynasty could be roughly offset by the country's income from selling salt.

So the Song Dynasty was really rich at that time. After the Song Dynasty, it was the Yuan Dynasty. The Mongols basically followed most of the systems in the Central Plains, especially the salt introduction system. There were no major changes, almost 100%. Hundreds of inheritance.

It was not until the Ming Dynasty that this salt introduction system began to continue to evolve.

In the early Ming Dynasty, especially during the Hongwu period, one of the country's biggest problems was the Northern Yuan Dynasty in the north.

During Zhu Yuanzhang's reign, although he drove the Northern Yuan Dynasty back to the northern grasslands, the enemies in the north were still very powerful. Therefore, during his reign, Zhu Yuanzhang conducted many Northern Expeditions and fought against the enemies in the north.

Since there was going to be a war, food was naturally the top priority. However, the country had just been established at that time, and the north was in constant war. There was no surplus food to support the army. The only way was to transfer food from the south.

However, it is very expensive to adjust grain from the south, and corruption is prone to occur in the process.

Lao Zhu is so smart. After thinking about it for a while, he decided to combine the two tasks of selling salt and transporting grain!

Under Lao Zhu's promotion, the salt merchants wanted to buy salt. In the future, they could no longer use money, but had to use grain. To be precise, they asked the salt merchants to transport grain to the front line. How much grain was transported to the front line? Use this to exchange for salt.

This method played a great role in the early years of the Ming Dynasty.

In fact, this method was not pioneered by Lao Zhu. It had appeared in the Song Dynasty. However, due to corrupt officials in the Song Dynasty, this system had too many loopholes. After it was put into operation, the country would actually lose money. , so it was later banned.

But Lao Zhu was different at this time. Everyone knows that the Hongwu period was the most stringent time to control corruption in China's five thousand years of history. Even methods such as peeling daylilies were used.

Therefore, this system was still very useful at the time. It could not only ensure the country's income, but also transport a large amount of food to the front line at the lowest cost.

But Lao Zhu probably didn't expect that this system would accelerate the formation of Yanyin futures.

You must know that transportation was extremely underdeveloped at that time. Merchants transported grain from the south to the north, and then came back from the north. With the certificate of transportation of grain, they went to Nanjing to exchange for salt imports, and then took the salt imports to the salt field to get salt, and then went to carry out the work. Sale.

During this period, it will take at least one year at least, and it may be two or three years at the longest.

Over such a long period of time, salt prices have fluctuated greatly.

In order to improve the operation of this process, people at that time came up with a more practical method - cooperation and division of labor!

In this system, there are specialized grain transport merchants, salt merchants and salt sellers, forming a complete industrial chain. The grain transport merchants specialize in transporting grain, the salt merchants resell salt, and the salt sellers are responsible for selling salt. .

After hundreds of years of development, Yanyin has a strong futures attribute. By the Ming Dynasty, it could be bought and sold almost freely. What is the difference between this and our futures today?

In fact, if this momentum continues, the emergence of Yanyin futures may lead to the rise of capitalism, and then spread to other fields, allowing Ming Dynasty to first develop a complete futures trading system, and even around the world, and finally Enter capitalist society first.

But unfortunately, things did not develop according to this script.

This Yanyin futures trading system reached its peak during the Hongzhi period of the Ming Dynasty!

However, as the enemies in the north gradually weakened, there were fewer and fewer wars in the north. The country no longer needed to transport grain to the north on a large scale. Moreover, with the advent of the Age of Discovery, a large amount of silver poured into China. Silver began to flow into China in the middle of the Ming Dynasty. It began to gradually become monetized. The exchange of grain for salt in the past changed back to the exchange of silver for salt.

This system made the entire Yanyin futures trading system more complete. In Jiangnan, there were even some places specializing in Yanyin auctions, similar to the later futures market.

At this time, Yanyin was no longer just a thing used to obtain salt, but became a futures bond officially put on the market, with price fluctuations caused by changes in salt prices.

However, this early budding futures trading was finally stifled by the damn feudal imperial power. . . "

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