Financing the navy

fallsfromtrees wrote:

Graydon wrote:[snip]
Because the author is on their side, Charis has Silverlode Island. (It's not without historical precedent; the UK got the Transvaal, and the US got the California Gold Strike during the Civil War.) They're going to be able to expand their economy enough while staying on the Writ's restrictions about what money really is.

Really great summary.

Thank you!

fallsfromtrees wrote:A couple of minor nits - the California Gold Strike was in 1849, 12 years before the ACW. What helped by the Comstock Lode Silver strike in Nevada in 1859, which was just in time for the ACW. Other than that, a masterful summary.

The initial strike was 1849, yes, but the hydraulic mining after less and less dense gold deposits in Miocene river channel gravels kept up right through the Civil War and no further (because it was altering the topography, depth of rivers, etc. and starting to make everyone not involved in gold mining rather angry) with regular gold deliveries round the Horn to New York. If I remember correctly, the last bit of undisturbed gold-bearing gravel is under a Union Pacific right-of-way that got put in on level ground and looks like a tall causeway now.

I think/agree it's more likely Comstock is what are esteemed author is thinking about with Silverlode Island. Though possibly Potosí in Bolivia, which paid for most of the New Spanish Empire is the intended model.

Actually for a description of what is necessary to keep adding money to the economy without causing inflation, read Robert Heinlein's Beyond this Horizon or even For We the Living, although it isn't as clear an explanation there.

fallsfromtrees wrote:There is textev that not all of the currencies are the same. At one point Duchairn says the the Temple mark was once worth 14% more than a Charisan mark, but that it was now worth 11% less. This tends to indicate that the relative value of currencies fluctuates between them.

I don't think that's evidence that the currencies, in the sense of "this gold coin from a Temple Lands mint" and "this gold coin from a Charisian Royal mint" are different. I can't imagine that the Church would ever have tolerated that; one standard currency for taxation, laid out in the Holy Writ.

What I think that's an indication of is the selling price premium of coins physically located in either Charis or the Temple Lands. The utility of the coins varies by location (if you're shipwrecked and have the Marine Regiment Pay chest and a spare pair of socks, the gold in the pay chest isn't going to do you much good on your desert island; it's a lot more useful where there's something to buy) as does the perceived security of the money. I take Duchairn to be saying "there used to be a premium on gold being useful and safe in the Temple Lands, and now there's a premium on gold being useful and safe in Charis".

This is something his Group of Four colleagues don't take anything like seriously enough. That's literally the smart money betting -- not by much, but some -- Charis is going to win.

So a banker in the Temple Lands who wanted to purchase gold in Charis by letter of credit (for the Archbishop's vestment fund or whatever) would once have been able to say to a banker in Charis, I will deposit 100 marks in your Temple Lands account and you will deposit 114 marks in the Archbishop's Charisian account and we'll call it even and the banker would have agreed, that's the rate and it's much, much safer to do it that way the semaphore than to put gold on a ship where a storm can sink it.

When Duchairn says that about the rate change, a very circumspect Temple Lands banker who is perhaps considering hedging the family wealth just a little would have to offer a 111 mark deposit in the Temple Lands account of an equally circumspect Charisian banker to get a 100 mark deposit credited to them in Charis. (This is a lot of what depository banks used to do; move ownership labels on gold around.)

Only of course it's going to be even less formal than that and involve smugglers and plausible deniability and intermediate goods of some sort, but that's the idea. There's an increasing general perception that a gold coin in Charis is safer and more useful than one in the Temple Lands.

Graydon wrote:

fallsfromtrees wrote:There is textev that not all of the currencies are the same. At one point Duchairn says the the Temple mark was once worth 14% more than a Charisan mark, but that it was now worth 11% less. This tends to indicate that the relative value of currencies fluctuates between them.

I don't think that's evidence that the currencies, in the sense of "this gold coin from a Temple Lands mint" and "this gold coin from a Charisian Royal mint" are different. I can't imagine that the Church would ever have tolerated that; one standard currency for taxation, laid out in the Holy Writ.

What I think that's an indication of is the selling price premium of coins physically located in either Charis or the Temple Lands. The utility of the coins varies by location (if you're shipwrecked and have the Marine Regiment Pay chest and a spare pair of socks, the gold in the pay chest isn't going to do you much good on your desert island; it's a lot more useful where there's something to buy) as does the perceived security of the money. I take Duchairn to be saying "there used to be a premium on gold being useful and safe in the Temple Lands, and now there's a premium on gold being useful and safe in Charis".

This is something his Group of Four colleagues don't take anything like seriously enough. That's literally the smart money betting -- not by much, but some -- Charis is going to win.

So a banker in the Temple Lands who wanted to purchase gold in Charis by letter of credit (for the Archbishop's vestment fund or whatever) would once have been able to say to a banker in Charis, I will deposit 100 marks in your Temple Lands account and you will deposit 114 marks in the Archbishop's Charisian account and we'll call it even and the banker would have agreed, that's the rate and it's much, much safer to do it that way the semaphore than to put gold on a ship where a storm can sink it.

When Duchairn says that about the rate change, a very circumspect Temple Lands banker who is perhaps considering hedging the family wealth just a little would have to offer a 111 mark deposit in the Temple Lands account of an equally circumspect Charisian banker to get a 100 mark deposit credited to them in Charis. (This is a lot of what depository banks used to do; move ownership labels on gold around.)

Only of course it's going to be even less formal than that and involve smugglers and plausible deniability and intermediate goods of some sort, but that's the idea. There's an increasing general perception that a gold coin in Charis is safer and more useful than one in the Temple Lands.

V interesting indeed! One reads the original text, see little things like that and dont see the implications, until spelt out by someone who knows what they are talking about - thanks

That does imply that Duchairn has treasury sources of information independant of Clyntahn too and maybe in Charis itself.

Personally, I am surprised that along with roman numerals, Langhorne didn't designate a pound / shilling / pence type currency with 20 shillings to the pound and 12 pennies to the shilling so that the price of something looks like Liv/Sxvi/Pxvii. Wouldn't that have been fun when adding up a bill!

Keith_w wrote:Personally, I am surprised that along with roman numerals, Langhorne didn't designate a pound / shilling / pence type currency with 20 shillings to the pound and 12 pennies to the shilling so that the price of something looks like Liv/Sxvi/Pxvii. Wouldn't that have been fun when adding up a bill!

Yes, except of nice round numbers like 20 and 12, use mystical numbers like 23 and 13, which could be justified by virtue of Holy Writ. (Easy enough when you are writing Holy Writ)

None of we old fogies who were brought up on pounds, shillings and pence had any problem at all in adding up the groceries bill, thank you very much. And we boggle at the number of people used to decimal currencies who can't do simple arithmetic in their heads. None of the staff (or the owner) at my local newsagent can even work out my monthly bill without using a calculator; that's an unchanging £6.60 a week but I have to tell them when the computer has got it wrong again. Sigh. I'd be just as able to calculate with 23 shilling of 13 pence, or any other complication you might care to specify, and so would my contemporaries - it's only simple arithmetic, after all.
Cheers
John

fallsfromtrees wrote:

Keith_w wrote:Personally, I am surprised that along with roman numerals, Langhorne didn't designate a pound / shilling / pence type currency with 20 shillings to the pound and 12 pennies to the shilling so that the price of something looks like Liv/Sxvi/Pxvii. Wouldn't that have been fun when adding up a bill!

Yes, except of nice round numbers like 20 and 12, use mystical numbers like 23 and 13, which could be justified by virtue of Holy Writ. (Easy enough when you are writing Holy Writ)

John Prigent wrote:None of we old fogies who were brought up on pounds, shillings and pence had any problem at all in adding up the groceries bill, thank you very much. And we boggle at the number of people used to decimal currencies who can't do simple arithmetic in their heads. None of the staff (or the owner) at my local newsagent can even work out my monthly bill without using a calculator; that's an unchanging £6.60 a week but I have to tell them when the computer has got it wrong again. Sigh. I'd be just as able to calculate with 23 shilling of 13 pence, or any other complication you might care to specify, and so would my contemporaries - it's only simple arithmetic, after all.
Cheers
John

Sure, it can be done. But it would be an added complication, just like Roman numerals. It would be a reasonable thing for Langhorne to have done.

John Prigent wrote:None of we old fogies who were brought up on pounds, shillings and pence had any problem at all in adding up the groceries bill, thank you very much. And we boggle at the number of people used to decimal currencies who can't do simple arithmetic in their heads. None of the staff (or the owner) at my local newsagent can even work out my monthly bill without using a calculator; that's an unchanging £6.60 a week but I have to tell them when the computer has got it wrong again. Sigh. I'd be just as able to calculate with 23 shilling of 13 pence, or any other complication you might care to specify, and so would my contemporaries - it's only simple arithmetic, after all.

While it is simple arithmetic and it did work fine for centuries, something one can say about the Carolingian pounds-shilling-pence and the dread combination of Babylonian base-60 numbers, clay tokens, and personal seals, whatever gets picked the Angels have to be able to use flawlessly where the Adams and Eves are watching. Someone's going to show up with an accounting question every day for the first ten years or so.

I suspect that Langhorne just didn't want to burn the internal political capital involved in making everybody learn some non-decimal accounting system.

isaac_newton wrote:That does imply that Duchairn has treasury sources of information independant of Clyntahn too and maybe in Charis itself.

Yes. Duchairn more or less can't do the job unless the Treasury is getting information about all trade, including the black and grey market trade, since in a hard gold standard world, any trade will tend to move gold. (It's unlikely both sides of smuggled trade have something compact and durable and suitable for smuggling; the purchaser probably pays gold.)

It's going to be very scattered information and not all of a piece, time-wise; it will show up by communications channels of highly varying length. It won't be anything like as good as modern market pricing, but it should be good enough that Duchairn can look at trends and lose stomach lining.

(Not that Safehold knows about the history, but when your side is imposing on its upper class and its lower class economically during a war -- everybody in the Temple Lands thinks they're getting poorer -- and the other side is experiencing a noticeable increase in general prosperity, you aren't winning.)

All the way through the Napoleonic Wars, dolls dressed in the latest Parisian fashion somehow made it to England every season; it's not like this sub-rosa trade will be restricted to vitally needed parts for the agricultural machinery. So it's possible Duchairn has some significant leverage available by making sure Clinton finds out about something the Grand Inquisitor can't publicly approve of.