Chapter 41: A Knife in the Back (1)
"What is the situation in Libya now? Have our people connected with the local tribal armed forces?"
In the Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing Street, British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin blew out a smoke ring and slowly asked Joseph Austin Chamberlain, who is now the Foreign Secretary of Great Britain.
In the turmoil two years ago, due to the loss of points by the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party on economic issues, the traditional two powers lost the prime minister's throne for the first time, allowing Labour Party leader Ramsay MacDonald to obtain the right to form a cabinet and served as prime minister for 10 months. Although the time was not long, it was the first time in history. Since then, the Labour Party has replaced the Liberal Party and become the second largest political force in British politics. Although it cannot shake the position of the Conservative Party, the power of the Liberal Party has been sharply suppressed.
It is obviously irresponsible to focus on the personal talents of leaders to determine the rise and fall of political parties. In fact, it all comes down to national power: it is precisely because Great Britain lost its power to command the heroes after World War I and began to become conservative and closed that the concept of always adhering to free competition seems a bit pedantic. The British government has tried to maintain free trade, continue to improve the status of the pound, and continue to adhere to the gold standard. However, in addition to allowing American goods from across the ocean to pour in like a tide, the domestic economy is declining, the unemployment rate is high, and the gold standard that was originally intended to be maintained cannot be maintained, allowing various speculative capitalists to take away a lot of money - naturally, Contini and the United Group's speculation and profiteering are indispensable.
Although the United Group did not make much money, it was nothing more than joining in the fun, and even Contini himself did not feel it, because it was Rio who took advantage of the U-turn business he made during his visit to the United States and ate up more than 700,000 pounds of exchange differences, fighting a beautiful blitzkrieg, which is very beautiful in terms of operational strength. But the British were furious when they found out later - it's OK for Americans, French, and Jews to use finance to engage in speculation, but now even Italians dare to come up with it? It's really outrageous.
The second thing that the financial community is uncomfortable with is the United Group's intervention in the financial market. There are two accounts to be settled here: the first is the operation of Union Bank, which suddenly appeared and acquired many small and medium-sized Italian banks, which moved the cheese of the British banking industry.
Originally, the Italian banking industry was relatively small, so if the import and export business involved international payments, all of them were transferred through foreign banks. Swiss banks were not strong in this regard, but British or French banks were strong. Due to traditional cooperative relations, Italian banks basically transferred through British banks, especially the three major banks. However, after the establishment of Union Bank, it suddenly left the British banking industry aside and directly became related to Wall Street, changing from pro-British to pro-American. Not only did the British lose hundreds of thousands of pounds of commission income every year, but Union Bank also opened its own US branch and used the industrial advantages of the United Group to let other Italian small and medium-sized banks that were not included in the system go through the Union Bank channel.
Why Wall Street is so interested in the United Group is because they found that Contini is completely different from traditional Italian politicians. He is not close to Britain and France, but close to the United States and Germany. He is close to the United States in economy and finance, and close to Germany in technology, industry and talents. This allows the American industry to open up relations with Italy and radiate to Central Europe.
The second account is the issue of loans to the United States and high-interest deposits of Italian banks. Contini has applied for nearly 400 million US dollars in loans from the United States, and is also preparing to issue another 100 million US dollars in corporate bonds. Even if calculated at 5% interest, the annual interest expenditure is 25 million US dollars - equivalent to two good battleships. If inertia is followed, these loans should flow to Great Britain.
As for why he did not borrow from the British, Contini spread his hands: The British loan conditions are not lower than 6%, so why should he borrow from the UK? But the British do not think so. They believe that the United Group purchases a lot in the United States, so Wall Street tycoons are willing to lend at a low interest rate of 5% or even 4.8%. If the United Group transfers these orders to the UK, it is guaranteed to give 5% or even lower interest. The problem is that Contini doesn't like the expensive and poor industrial junk in Britain, but he likes the company industry and technology patents of Rolls-Royce, but the proud British are unwilling to sell, so in the end, the United Group can only use the Rolls-Royce engine to carry out "independent innovation" after German engineers survey and map it. This is a major source of contradiction.
If Great Britain still has the self-esteem of free trade ideas, perhaps these gentlemen will laugh at where the United Group borrows money from, but now Great Britain has also begun to protect trade, and the United Group's interests must not be missed.
The high-interest deposit behavior of the United Bank has exacerbated the anxiety of the financial sector. The interest rate of 3.75% is only 0.5% higher for Italians, but for countries such as Britain and France where deposit interest rates generally hover around 2%, 3.75% is almost doubled, which immediately siphoned a large amount of funds - the French have little objection to this, anyway, it is a loan to make a living, and it is best if the Italians are willing to pay high interest rates, and the British government generally feels that it is intolerable.
Raise interest rates in your country? That would tighten money, aggravate economic turmoil, and increase interest payments on government debt. But if interest rates were not raised, it would also cause capital outflows and trigger social contraction. In the original historical time and space, without Contini, a group that had attracted $500 million in money, Americans would still have They will happily issue loans to Britain. Now, on the one hand, the Italians borrow money from the United States to purchase things for domestic construction, and on the other hand, the British take loans to strengthen Britain's industrial strength in an attempt to compete with the United States. Of course, the Americans are willing to choose the former - it is also to make money. Why bother yourself?
Therefore, the British side can only watch helplessly as funds continue to flow towards Italy. In Contini’s words, the United Group is the engine of this trend: In order to support the United Group, the loans for upstream and downstream industrial units have also reached more than 2 At the same time, because the United Group ordered many goods from Germany, Germany achieved a rapid inflow of funds after the Dawes Plan. Contini himself did not know that just because of his large-scale borrowing, he caused changes in international capital flows of nearly 1 billion in two years and caused uneasiness among the British people.
It's not that the British haven't thought about making up for it. They pressured Greece to make concessions on the Corfu issue in order to further draw closer relations with Italy. Unexpectedly, the Italians took the advantage, but refused to give any subsequent rewards to Great Britain, and even did it behind the scenes. Stabbed himself.
This knife is the oil problem.