C3346 This country's usury!

Xiao Letian looked at a bunch of rose flowers struggling to come out from the ruins. The tender and beautiful flower bud had already drunk its fill of blood and was currently blooming with a dazzling blood-red light.

"Why does France have a nickname called usury imperialism... "You don't have to be surprised. It was summed up by the great ox man who was exiled from Germany!"

"Actually, before the war, if you had looked for this fellow villager to study the strategy, you wouldn't have made such a big mistake!"

"The fact that France became an imperialist usurper has a lot to do with you too!"

The root of the problem was Raoult Rigo, Eugene and Andrew's famous conversation!

In that thought process, Xiao Letian had hit the nail on the head on one of the major problems that had appeared in the French economy.

Before the Franco-Prussian War, the cost of manpower was rising, the price of land rent was rising, and the cost of raw materials and logistics was rising significantly.

Even worse, production efficiency had never been raised, and the scientific and technological content of industrial goods had fallen behind that of Prussia, which had led to a steady decline in the international competitiveness of French industrial goods.

There was no way for them to fight Prussia's price war, nor could they rely on technological innovation to increase their added value, so there was a serious slump in the industry of the entire France.

And this landslide further exacerbated the conflict between the working class and the capitalists, causing the various conflicts to gradually worsen!

Look, this is a vicious circle, one ring after another of collapse, and finally let the problem not be solved but even more fierce!

If industry is lost, what about French agriculture? This was also a serious problem!

Due to the time of the French Revolution, the Republic divided the rights to the peasants and divided the large piece of land in the hands of the feudal lords into small pieces to be distributed among the landless peasants.

This, of course, adds to the welfare of the peasants, but the obvious drawback is that it creates a serious smallholder economy, and that French agriculture cannot be scaled up!

Not to mention the big farm economy of the United States, not even the English pasture scale, the whole French agriculture is completely loose home shape.

There was a problem with agriculture and industry, but France itself had accumulated a great deal of wealth during its first Industrial Revolution!

What is wealth? Wealth is capital!

The nature of capital was for profit, and this nature could not be suppressed. Capital was like a flood that had to be found and released!

French capitalists have no place to invest with money in their hands, you say? Industry is no competition at all for Germany.

Investing in agriculture? They were all small farm economies and could not form a large-scale economy at all. They hoped that buying a few farms and wineries could solve the problem of raking in capital for profit? It was a joke.

One had to be sure that the amount of capital needed to make a profit was very large, and that was not just tens of millions of francs. If it was that small, it could be easily digested by just a few wine estates.

The capital that needs to go for profit is probably as high as seven or eight billion Gold franc, it might even approach a hundred billion Gold franc!

With so much capital trying to make a profit, no real estate could take it in, and in the end it was forced to the point of no return, thus forming a unique economic phenomenon in France.

That was lending, usury!

This was a loan sharking by the entire population. Rich people with spare money would pool their money together and make a big impact in all walks of life!

Do you need money? Do you want to expand your money? This 30% profit, this 50%!

Even in the end, this usury business was able to go abroad. Many countries looked for French usury to borrow the military expenditures from the war!

Isn't it funny? While Germany, Britain and the United States were importing their industrial goods to the world, France was desperately exporting its capital and luxury goods and culture!

Capital itself had become a profitable commodity, which was also considered a little cleverness on the part of the French.

Listening to Xiao Letian's careful analysis of the details, Bismark's heart surged with a trace of worry and unease!

"It seems like I was really wrong. My intelligence agency has been focusing on the French finance ministry and those big banks …"

"Although I can pry into every large amount of funds in France, but for the huge amount of private capital, I've become a blind person …"

"Perhaps it's as you said. I should go meet with my fellow countryman who has been exiled …"

Xiao Letian reached his hand out to pluck the blood-red rose that bloomed in the ruins and said softly, "My old friend, the truth is that France's foundation is actually much stronger than you and I imagined!"

"This country is extremely rich, but the people have an extreme character... I conclude that there is a strong romantic feeling, a little... "Floating, it means floating!"

"This country is very evil. You can defeat him, but you can't conquer him … And you have to be careful, with such a strong national power, one day, you might be dragged down! "

"Please do not let your guard down. You and I are very much at ease …" I'm just afraid that your successor will suddenly become arrogant! "

"When a great power rises, it must have self-control and patience …" You cannot be so impetuous as to think that you are number one in the world! "

Xiao Letian's analysis of France was very thorough. The total amount of capital in France was more than he had expected.

In the beginning of the 20th century, France lent 11 billion francs to Russia.

At the same time, France had borrowed 6 billion francs from the world, which was just an external loan. If the country's larger borrowing volume was taken into account, the total would probably be more than 1 billion francs.

Prussia's extortion of $5 billion in war reparations was nothing compared to the sheer amount of capital they had.

Six and a half billion francs was just a little bit of an embarrassment to France, but it didn't hurt at all.

What France could not stand was the ceding of the two provinces and the overseas colonies!

Regret was useless. After all, the Frankfurt Treaty had already been signed, and there was no way for him to go back on his words now. Bismark could only bid farewell to Xiao Letian regretfully.

But before leaving, Bismark said in a low voice, "Old friend, I suggest you return home early … "Don't worry, I will supervise the payment of the compensation that belongs to you. I will definitely pay you a coin!"

"There's a lot of intelligence, and Britain is very wary of you right now... "You already have a new nickname, someone has called you European shit stirrer!"

"You're too famous, you should hide for a bit …"