DMcCunney wrote:Louis R wrote:You're remembering a separate incident some 3 books earlier [maybe 4].
Duchairn did indeed sell off - or offer to, at least - Church properties in Charis & Chisolm. On the understanding that taking possession was the purchaser's problem. At the same time he put a good number of minor Church properties on the mainland on the block, at a much less remarkable discount since transfer to the new owner could be guaranteed. It was, IIRC, detailed in the same conversation with Magwair where the new arrangements in Harchong were outlined, but since i don't have searchable copies of the books i can't tell you exactly where.
I do have and may Look Stuff Up later, but I'll take your word that the conversation occurred. Thanks for the memory jog.
So Duchairn did have that idea. Well, that's another way to raise money - liquidate assets to get cash. I suspect the Church has a fair amount of such assets it could turn into cash.
_______
Dennis
Louis is correct, and it did bring in a nice little python lump of cash from the more . . . optimistic speculators.
Another thing that will become clear in the current book is that Mother Church has also imposed draconian wage and price controls that amount to a freeze at pre-jihad levels. He's also begun adulterating the currency to make it go farther, which is a much more significant step on Safehold than it was here on Earth. The
Writ puts strict limits on fiat currency, though I haven't discussed them in the books. They don't
quite dictate that all currency must be specie-based, but they come very close (the actual restrictions come under the fair measure clause), so reducing the gold content is actually the less . . . fraught way to increase the currency supply. Unfortunately, it's
also a major religious no-no, and people have become aware it's happening anyway. Of course, Clyntahn has signed off on the debasement, which makes it technically "legal," but it's not increasing people's faith in the Temple's financial health one bit.
All of this is having certain predictable effects --- like driving hard currency into the black market --- and isn't doing a thing for the Temple Loyalists' faith that the jihad is going well. (Or at least better than those pestiferous broadsheets in Zion claim!
)
In essence, Duchairn and the Treasury are now in a flat out sprint to the finish line. They have no choice but to spend however much it takes to equip the army currently in the field and being built, and they have now essentially pulled all the levers. As far as Duchairn and Maigwair are concerned, 898 is the make-or-break year. Either they defeat the Allies (or at least knock them back on their heels with heavy losses), or else it's over, because they simply can't continue to prop up the Church's finances. Short of a confiscatory economy where the Church controls all production and all distribution of
all goods without monetary payment at all, they will be in collapse mode by sometime in mid to late-899.
Duchairn knows Clyntahn is perfectly willing to embrace exactly that solution, but he seriously questions the Inquisition's ability to
enforce it, in no small part because of the beating Clyntahn's reputation as Grand Inquisitor has been taking. He is well aware that whether Clyntahn wants to admit it or not (even to himself) Reformist sentiment is climbing sharply even in the Temple Lands as the military reverses continue to mount and the truth about which side is actually the brutal, oppressive force of darkness begins to sink fully home.
Rayno is aware of this, too, BTW, although his response to that awareness is rather different from Duchairns.
