novelSusiti Chapter 39 You call this... an immature idea?
Chapter 39 You call this... an immature idea?
"call--!"
The dilapidated wooden door, carrying all the anger and resentment of a desperate scholar, slammed into Constantine's face.
Alexandros's heart stopped! He didn't even have time to cry out; he instinctively lunged forward!
However, one hand, a hand with distinct knuckles and wearing a simple royal seal ring, came first.
The hand stretched out flat, fingers spread, and rested firmly on the door panel.
There was no loud noise, no tremor.
The violent door panel came to an abrupt halt less than half an inch from Constantine's nose. The scene was utterly bizarre; the door panel remained motionless.
Behind the door, the immense force of Andreas slamming it shut slammed solidly into the hand through the door panel. He felt as if he hadn't bumped into a hand, but into a mountain. A completely still, silent mountain.
He was stunned.
Constantine's hand remained firmly pressed against the door, his face showing no trace of anger or humiliation. He simply stared calmly at the pair of eyes behind the door, slightly dilated with shock.
Then he spoke.
"Professor, are you done ranting?"
The sound was soft and flat, yet it was like a cold probe that precisely pierced Andreas's furious heart.
Andreas' movements froze completely.
He had imagined countless possible reactions from the other man. Furious, he could order the guards to drag him out and hang him. He could storm off, leaving behind a vicious curse. Or perhaps he would be so intimidated by his imposing presence that he would flee in terror.
But he never imagined it would turn out this way.
calm.
A kind of calm that defies common sense and sends chills down your spine.
A crown prince, the heir to a country, was called a vampire by him, humiliated with the most vulgar language, and finally slapped in the face with a door.
He wasn't angry at all?
Constantine withdrew his hand when he saw that the other party remained silent. He did not take another step forward, but only stepped back half a step, leaving enough space, as if to say: Please continue, I am listening.
He looked at Andreas's face, contorted with shock, anger, and confusion, and spoke again.
"You're absolutely right."
Andreas was jolted, wondering if there was something wrong with his ears.
Constantine's gaze swept across the filthy stairwell, past the faint sounds of children crying in the distance, his tone as frank as if stating a fact.
"Greece is indeed sick, terminally ill. And for a long time, the royal family has indeed been part of this pathological system, the biggest beneficiary, and the most numb bystander."
These words were far more damaging than the calm question he had just asked!
The flame in Andreas's eyes went out, replaced by a bottomless astonishment.
Like a trapped beast, he had amassed five years' worth of venom and claws, and lunged forward with all his might, only to find himself trapped in a wad of cotton. His opponent not only didn't retaliate, but instead ripped open his own chest, telling him: "You were right to stab me; this place was already rotten."
This feeling caused Andreas to instantly lose all his strength.
"But now," Constantine's voice deepened, his honesty transforming into an unwavering resolve, "I want to cure it."
He didn't give Andreas time to react, taking the thick folder from Alexandros, who had been following behind him.
He handed the folder over himself, leaning forward slightly, adopting the posture of a student asking a teacher for advice.
"I am not here to bribe you, nor to command you. Today, I am merely a student with a rudimentary understanding of economics, yet I aspire to change the country."
Constantine's gaze was sincere and focused.
"I've come here to ask you, a true expert, to critique my immature, even far-fetched, idea."
Andreas stiffly lowered his head, his gaze falling on the document.
On the cover was a line of strong, powerful handwriting he had never seen before.
Preliminary concept of the Greek National Industrial Investment Bank.
This headline struck him like a heavy hammer blow to the heart!
National...Industrial...Investment Bank?
These words, each one a whispered murmur in his dreams, were the only path he believed could save the country!
He instinctively reached out his hand, but then stopped in mid-air.
He raised his head, staring intently at Constantine with a suspicious look, a cold smile creeping onto his lips.
"A showpiece."
It's another one of those royal and aristocratic gimmicks. They hire a few ghostwriters to draft a grandiose plan, then use it to win people over. He's seen it all before.
But his hand, as if possessed, took the document.
The paper felt thick and warm to the touch, a stark contrast to his cold fingers.
He stood in the doorway, showing no intention of letting the other person in. He leaned against the doorframe, and by the pitifully dim light of the hallway, turned to the first page.
The mockery on Andreas's face froze completely on the very first paragraph of the first page.
His breathing stopped.
He read greedily and thirstily. His hawk-like eyes were fixed on the dense text on the paper.
His hands began to tremble slightly, uncontrollably.
This document was not at all the empty political slogans he had imagined!
There isn't a single wasted word in it! It's all structure, data, and models!
A colossal and astonishing system slowly unfolded before his eyes!
The newly acquired £7.5 million in bonds will be split in two!
Part of it was injected into a newly established "National Industrial Investment Bank," which was completely separated from the existing national bank!
The bank's sole mission is to inject funds, like precisely irrigated life-giving water, into emerging local industries deliberately suppressed and stifled by the oligarchic financial system—the mining industry in Thessaly, the manufacturing industry around Athens, and small boat owners who yearn to upgrade their steamships but have no access to loans—at ultra-low interest rates three to five percentage points lower than the market rate.
The other part of the funds will be used as seed money to establish a true "central bank"!
This central bank will gradually reclaim the most important power in the country—the power to issue currency—from private oligarchs!
Andreas saw a word that he only dared to imagine in his dreams!
"Fiat money!"
In the document, Constantine put forward a subversive view using a logic he had never heard of before, yet which was extremely rigorous: a country's currency issuance should not be linked solely to how much gold is stored in its cold cellars!
It should, and must, be linked to the country's future total industrial output, commercial tax revenue, and national productivity!
Gold is merely the "anchor" of credit, while a nation's thriving future is the true hull of the great ship of credit!
The document even included a mathematical formula that precisely describes how base money, after circulating within the commercial banking system, generates several times its own broad money supply.
"Money...multiplier?"
Andreas felt his blood rushing backwards, straight to the top of his head!
He wasn't reading a proposal from the Crown Prince.
He's peeking into God's economics notes!
For five years, in this moldy attic, on countless nights drowned in alcohol and despair, he mused on those scattered, unsystematic thoughts, which he himself considered to be the ravings of madness…
What is the essence of national credit?
How to break the financial monopoly of oligopolies?
How to find the first pot of gold for industrialization for impoverished Greece?
All the fog and confusion were cleaved apart at this moment by the words in this document, like bolts of lightning that pierced the sky!
A complete, grand, logically closed-loop, and... entirely feasible blueprint for saving the nation was presented before his eyes!
He felt like a prisoner in a dark cave, who had spent his whole life digging into the walls with his fingernails, when suddenly someone smashed open the cave ceiling.
A dazzling light poured down.
That's the sun.
Andreas suddenly raised his head and stared intently at Constantine with the look of someone looking at a monster.
There was no longer any contempt, anger, or mockery in those eyes.
All that remained was an incredible mixture of fanaticism, worship, and the ultimate.
He opened his mouth, but his throat felt like it had been sanded, and he couldn't make a sound.
He tried several times before finally managing to squeeze out a dry, hoarse, and violently trembling sentence.
"This...you wrote this?"
The documents in his hands seemed to weigh a ton, almost too heavy to hold.
"This is impossible...this is absolutely impossible!"