Chapter 629: Detonation
Chapter 616 Detonation
The brilliant and incomparably gorgeous sun in the sky; the gentle and valiant breeze that tantalizes the heart; the ancient and melodious sound of endless bells; the vast and boundless night sky that is silent; and the bright and dazzling stars …… all together embellish the gorgeous and colorful colorfulness of the early summer.
Concerts are being held in the Palais de Vienna, one of the few entertainments of the age, and the supreme musical extravaganza of Austria.
Originally Franz was going to have an awards ceremony, only after considering his own level of appreciation, he finally gave it up decisively.
Music awards are very troublesome, everyone’s preferences are different, the operation is not good easy to make a joke.
After the Revolution, it was the peak of Austrian music creation, and many classic music came out.
Franz is not familiar with the music scene in Europe and the United States, which is the original time and space have, which is the butterfly effect under the generation, he can not figure out.
Anyway, just listen to it, qualified to enter the Vienna Palace performance, in itself is a kind of recognition. In this regard, we have to mention the late Marshal Radetzky, the signature of every concert is the Radetzky March.
This is an 1848 work by Austrian composer Johann Strauss Sr. It is set in the context of the Austrian army’s great victory in the Austro-Saxon War, and was produced to celebrate the victory.
The march itself has an element of flaunting the force of the Habsburg dynasty, and with the old marshal’s name on it, there is a natural political plus.
Promoted by the Vienna government, the Radetzky March had now spread halfway around the world and had become a representative of Austrian music.
Franz also loved the march, and it was used as the finale of every Vienna Palace concert, and its status in the Austrian music world was evident.
With the economic crisis looming, Franz could not be bothered to enjoy the concert. Including the Vienna government senior, can only regret to miss this music festival.
Can not be considered to miss, they are in the concert next door, still able to enjoy the music, just everyone is still deliberating.
Franz asked in a deep voice, “Has the situation gotten out of hand?”
Prime Minister Felix replied, “The situation in the country is, on the whole, fairly stable. The strikes are subsiding, and the vast majority of companies have reached a consensus with their workers and have begun to resume production.
Internationally, it’s a big mess, many countries have deployed their armies to suppress the strikes, and the situation is very tense. With the stock market crash at this time, I’m afraid an economic crisis is inevitable.”
Sending troops to suppress strikes was not an exception, it was a regular occurrence in the 19th century. In the original space and time, Bismarck’s name of “Iron Blood Chancellor”, in which the word “blood”, is to suppress strikes from.
There is a lot at stake here, and it cannot be summarized as simply right or wrong. Unlike Austria, where local control was strong enough for the police to arrive at the scene at the first opportunity to maintain order, the Austrian government was not able to do so.
Many countries do nothing at all when a strike breaks out. Left to the capitalists’ own devices, it was almost inevitable that the conflict would escalate in the midst of quarrels, which developed into vandalism of machinery and equipment and destruction of infrastructure ……
Part of it was bloodily suppressed by the capitalists, and the other part was a victory for the workers in the conflict. Gaining victory is not the same as the end, and human nature cannot be tested.
If there is someone among the workers who can restrain the crowd, it is fine, and they can fight for their rights rationally; if they lose their restraints, as long as there are one or two impulsive ones, the situation will soon get out of control.
In order to stabilize the situation as soon as possible, the government will inevitably choose to suppress it. At this point, right or wrong is no longer relevant; the bureaucrats just need to quell the chaos and stabilize the situation as soon as possible.
If they are held accountable afterwards, the unlucky ones will mostly be the ordinary workers who have no say in the matter. Even if there are people in the government who sympathize with them, they will still fall under the capitalists’ silver bullet offensive.
In Franz’s view, the main culprit that led to the tragedy was actually the government’s inaction or deliberate favoritism to the capitalists.
Under his butterfly effect, all European countries now basically have Labor Protection Laws, and if the government intervenes in advance and mediates labor conflicts within the legal framework, it is still not difficult to avoid riots.
It’s just that in this way, it’s harder for capitalists to get greater benefits. The vast majority of enterprises do not meet the standards of the Labor Protection Act, otherwise there would not have been a general strike that affected the whole of Europe.
The wave of strikes in Austria was contained because, in addition to the capitalists’ fear that the strikes would affect production, they also feared that the government would intervene after the strikes broke out and find out the fact that they had violated the Labor Protection Act.
Many capitalists took timely measures to pacify their workers by increasing some of their entitlements when the first signs of a strike appeared.
As for the enterprises that broke out in strikes, part of them were not smart enough to realize the danger; the other part hesitated in the face of benefits and reacted one step slower.
Labor treatment, in fact, usually follows market conditions. If other factories have increased their treatment and you continue to stay put, it is expected that it will not be long before all the capable workers run away.
With the development of the economy, labor costs rise is an inevitable result. This is also the impetus for productivity progress, without these pressures, capitalists and will not take the initiative for technological innovation.
Strikes affect not only business production, but also the shrinking of the consumer market. Without wages during a strike, people have to scrimp and save, and their purchasing power naturally declines.
Coupled with the stock market crash, which led to a break in the financial chain of enterprises, the situation may also be serious direct bankruptcy, a certain cycle of social unemployment rate rose.
The conditions for the outbreak of an economic crisis are already in place. Austria itself was already in crisis, and the international market was bad, so God could not stop the crisis from breaking out.
Looking out the window, Franz ruthless: “Then squeeze out this tumor early!”
This tumor thing, the sooner you treat it, the faster you will recover. If it was delayed until the end, and the tumor grew to the point of being uncontrollable, it would be killing people.
Economic crises also had both pros and cons, every economic crisis would bring serious losses, and likewise every economic crisis would also bring a lot of opportunities.
Essentially, economic crises are the market’s self-regulating repair. The economy that has run off course is pulled back onto the right track of development.
Anyway, the Great Migration Strategy has only just begun, so no matter how many unemployed people are added during the economic crisis, there will be places to go.
……
With Franz’s order, the Vienna government adopted conservative economic measures and abandoned its initial bailout program.
On June 18, 1876, in an effort to stabilize the financial markets, the Austrian central bank announced a contraction of the monetary base, raising the base interest rate on deposits by 16%.
The contraction of the monetary base at a time when money was most scarce in the market was not a “bailout”, but a fall from grace.
Austria’s domestic banks are numerous, the central bank and the latter-day Federal Reserve’s effect is similar, can regulate and influence the financial market. The central bank raised the benchmark interest rate is just a suggestion, but can not force all banks to raise the interest rate on bank deposits.
In fact, in order to absorb deposits, the vast majority of banks’ deposit interest rate, are more than the benchmark interest rate.
Before this, the benchmark interest rate for one-year deposits in Austria was 1%, and even with a 16% increase, it was only 1.16%.
This figure is still lower than the deposit rates of major banks in the market, but the impact is huge.
Through the central bank’s measures, it became clear that the Vienna government would not fund a bailout next, which made many investors despair.
Smart people have realized that the economic crisis is inevitable, have raised funds for the winter, the stock market has become more depressed.
On June 24, 1876, the Munich Vidal textile mill was approved to apply to the Munich government for bankruptcy reorganization because of the broken capital chain, thus kicking off the economic crisis.
Immediately after that, in just one month, more than two hundred enterprises including thirty listed companies applied to the government for bankruptcy and reorganization, and more than four hundred enterprises directly declared bankruptcy, thus the economic crisis broke out in Austria in full swing.
With the mass bankruptcy of enterprises, the wave of strikes naturally came to an end and was replaced by a wave of unemployment.
Public opinion was also confused, and the capitalists began to frantically shrug off the blame for the economic crisis and put it all on the shoulders of the workers’ strikes.
This served no purpose. On the windward side of the second industrial revolution, those who couldn’t keep up with the times and chose to go against the wind would naturally be eliminated by the market.
The “strike” was only the trigger, and at this point in time when the old and the new have changed, it is a crisis and an opportunity in itself.
Affected by the Austrian economic crisis, soon followed by the Russian Empire and the German Federal Empire, the economic crisis broke out one after another.
This was just the beginning, and the remaining European countries were soon implicated. By the time August rolled around, the economic crisis landed in London, and all the industrialized countries in all of Europe fell.
Franz was relieved to see everyone fall together. This is in line with the capitalist economy of the law of the market, from the last economic crisis has been almost ten years, how can the market is not a problem?
Facts have proved that the problem has long been accumulated, just missing a fuse to detonate.
Another round of the big fish eat small fish game began, watching the power of the consortium continue to grow, Franz also do not know whether it is right or wrong.
However, the cruel reality told him that this is the unstoppable law of capitalist economic development, not personal control.
In addition to becoming a member of it and controlling these new forces as much as possible, Franz could not go against the flow and put an end to the emergence of consortia.
To put it bluntly, what suppressed domestic consortia could not restrict international ones. Certain monarchs and great nobles may have noticed, and Franz saw them in the capital market.
Apparently, there was never a shortage of smart people in this world. Without the two world wars, I am afraid that the monarchy and nobility would not have fallen so far.
Of course, what the eyes saw might not be true. In his previous life, Franz was just an ordinary person, and the circle he was able to contact happened to be at the lowest level of society, and he simply couldn’t reach the superstructure.
What you see on the Internet can only be used as a reference, if all of them are taken as the truth, he would have been pitched to death, and it is impossible to live so well.
The emergence of the consortium is the law of the market, but who is dominating the consortium, this is to be proved. At least in this era, the strength in the hands of the nobility is still far stronger than the capitalists.
As far as Franz knew, there were big nobles behind many big capitalists in Europe. Otherwise, in this dark age, they would have been swallowed up long ago.
Well, that’s how Franz played it too. In addition to the obvious royal industries, most of the industries are likewise controlled in the dark and commanded remotely behind the scenes.
There was no way that all of these industries were placed under the name of the royal family, it was just too much hate, and the emperor would also wimp out.
(End of chapter)