Chapter 73 : Black Wednesday (2)

There’s no such thing as “economics” yet, but that doesn’t mean finance doesn’t exist.

In Nueva Granada, the capital of the Hispania Empire, the world’s first stock exchange stood.

It was established when trading companies that traveled back and forth between the New World began issuing stocks en masse to attract investment capital.

With the rush of new stocks, a specialized venue for trading them became a necessity.

That was how it began, but now, even ironworks and various merchant guilds were publicly listed.

The number of traded items had reached over six hundred.

“Oh my, President Juan! You’re here again today?”

“Gotta check how much my assets have appreciated. And you?”

“Pretty much the same. I bought some shares of a mid-sized trading company with the money I saved over the year. Hoping the price has gone up…”

A place where some laugh and others cry every time the stock prices shift.

 Once again, countless people cheerfully arrived at this quasi-gambling den, all praying to strike it rich this time.

However.

“Extra! Extra!! The Kingdom of Navre has announced a suspension on importing steel ingots and springs!!”

“The Helvetian Republic has informed us they’ll reduce imports of all goods by 30%!!”

“Border inspections by the Kram Empire have drastically intensified! They’re nitpicking every product category!!”

Today, the atmosphere was clearly unusual.

Boys dashed through the streets with hot-off-the-press newspapers.

Nobles and intellectuals read the articles with grave expressions.

Just hearing the shouting from every direction made it clear—something serious was happening.

All three major export partners were restricting trade.

What would happen to the merchant guilds?

What about the national economy?

Hispania survived by selling goods and making money abroad.

And as if to confirm those fears.

Inside the stock exchange, chaos reigned.

“Sell! Sell all my shares now!! I’ll pay a hefty fee, just sell everything immediately!!”

“Someone get me more chalk! The prices keep changing and I can’t keep the board updated!!”

“For the love of God, stop pushing!! People are going to get trampled!!”

The chalkboards listing stock prices were erased and rewritten endlessly due to the rapid fluctuations.

Wealthy men shouted desperately at traders while clutching bonds and bundles of stock.

Others clutched their heads and sat down in despair, reduced to ruin.

It was a scene straight out of a battlefield.

A desperate financial survival struggle where no one cared about dignity or status anymore.

Everyone did whatever they could to salvage at least a piece of their fortune from the market crash.

“That guild—was over 300 escudos just yesterday. Now it’s barely 100.”

“Who cares?! Every second, more items are disappearing from the trading list! If we hesitate, we won’t even be able to sell our shares!!”

“You should’ve only invested money you could afford to lose—”

“Bullshit! Who the hell has money they can afford to lose?! Then you give me your money and lose it for me!!!”

Anyone could see it.

The Hispania Empire’s stock market was in the midst of an unprecedented crash.

Not a temporary fluctuation, but a devastating collapse with no clear path to recovery.

*****

“What are we supposed to do to fix this situation?”

“…Can it even be fixed? It’s not just one or two companies—every business is shaking.”

“But we can’t just sit back and wait, can we?!”

The atmosphere among Hispania’s leadership, after being briefed on the collapse of their financial market, was grim beyond words.

Even when floods had displaced tens of thousands and rural and urban areas were devastated, the stock exchange had stood firm.

Now it was on the brink of extinction?

They wished they could deny reality—but reality would not be denied.

There was no time for mourning.

They had to come up with a plan.

“Why not suspend trading for now? Ban the buying and selling of stocks and bonds. That might stabilize prices.”

“Not sure about that. It might just add to the chaos.”

“The nobles won’t sit quietly. Half of them are invested in this mess.”

“Unless you’re going to send in the army to enforce it…”

But they couldn’t do even that.

They held meetings but never reached conclusions—just poked holes in each other’s suggestions.

Days of discussion passed, but no clear solution emerged.

Why?

Was it because they were fools?

No.

These were the emperor of a great power and his top aides.

If they were idiots, they wouldn’t have made it to where they were.

The reasons were threefold:

“If we had more in the treasury, we might at least try something… But we’ve got no money.”

“And there’s no one left to borrow from. With everyone else consumed by war, what nation is going to offer us a loan?”

“How about squeezing the colonies a bit?”

“What’s the point of exploiting the people who went all the way to the New World? I heard there’s an epidemic going around in that region lately, and they’re struggling and unable to work. Don’t entertain such foolish thoughts.”

The first issue was a lack of funds.

Ever since the war began, Hispania had profited from international trade, but most of the revenue had been spent on repairing infrastructure and reinforcing military capabilities.

Regardless of how population theorists neglected disaster relief, repairing facilities damaged by natural disasters was essential.

Some entire cities had been submerged, which required considerable costs.

On top of that, there was a longstanding national debt that needed repayment.

If the export boom had lasted for another year, there might have been enough money left over to begin saving—but the timing was unfortunate.

“We should just wait and watch. Given time, the market will correct itself.”

“…Will that be okay? What if the situation deteriorates to an irreversible point?”

“Oh, come on. As Ishmael said, there’s an invisible hand in the economy that takes care of self-regulation and adjustment.”

The second issue was a lack of knowledge.

This was the early-to-mid modern period, having just barely emerged from the Middle Ages.

Technology and scholarship were not merely immature—they were practically primitive.

Naturally, the concept of economics didn’t even exist.

Even those with some insight into economic matters could only parrot concepts like the “invisible hand” after reading books written by Ishmael.

Could such a workforce possibly handle something like a stock market crash?

These old-time people couldn’t even explain the specific process through which this situation had come about.

Absolutely impossible.

“More than that—why did they stop importing in the first place? They used to buy our goods just fine.”

“Looks like they’re building their own factories now. Like us, they’re gathering people and using division of labor to run production lines.”

“Tsk. I figured the technology would leak eventually since it wasn’t that complicated, but this is too fast.”

And finally.

The market environment had changed.

The Hispania Empire had once dominated the market with a low-cost strategy based on factory-style handcrafts.

Even including shipping costs, their goods were cheaper than those produced by other countries, which had been a major strength.

However, the technology and know-how that powered that advantage had leaked.

When The Wealth of Nations was exported, the methods went with it.

As a result, countries that acquired efficient production methods began raising their self-sufficiency in goods.

The outcome was a slowdown in exports and a blockade of trade routes.

Trade hadn’t ceased entirely, but the volume had sharply decreased and was unlikely to recover.

The days of effortlessly selling everything they made and reaping huge profits were over.

‘Now that it’s hard to make a profit, there’s no way the companies will remain unscathed.’

In short, the main sources of income for merchant guilds and trading companies—the pillars of the economy—had vanished.

If it were just a financial issue, it might have been manageable, but as it stands, there’s no solution without finding a new source of income.

“So in the end, all we can do now is watch?”

Unable to do this or that, the only remaining conclusion was neglect.

And so, in this intentionally laissez-faire atmosphere, Hispania’s stock market and economy ran hand-in-hand toward ruin.

*****

“Manufactured goods no longer bring profit, but what about slaves?”

“Slaves… Right? Even if the Kram and Helvetian bastards are self-sufficient in goods, they’ll still need to replenish their labor force.”

“We need to change our main product line right now.”

Merchant guilds that barely survived the ongoing crisis—or were on the verge of collapse—began to change their thinking.

At this point, they decided to change strategies.

“If we scrape together everything we have left, we’re not completely out of funds.”

“If we use the last of our money to buy slaves and sell them off in Allein…?”

“Launch the ships immediately! We have to buy and sell before others beat us to it!!”

Not only the existing slave trading companies but also former competitors rushed in, rapidly increasing the trade volume.

And as demand surged, the overall quality naturally dropped.

“What the hell is this lot? They’re so scrawny. Will they even survive the voyage?”

“Load them on—even kids are fine! They’ll sell for more than the elderly at least!”

Even children and the weak, previously not treated as marketable goods, were now being bought and sold.

It became a literal free-for-all of indiscriminate human trading.

Indigenous people kidnapped from deep remote regions were stuffed into cargo ships and hauled across the ocean.

With the simple belief that as long as they were brought over, they’d bring in money.

“Good! At this rate, our company won’t go under!!”

Merchants cheered, believing they had found an excellent survival strategy.

Completely unaware of the side effects this degraded distribution structure would bring.

*****

Meanwhile, in the Kingdom of Allein.

“Kalia, we already did it ten times yesterday. Maybe today we could just…”

“Hehe, come here!”

“Kyaaa!”

A delightful session of mating play was in full swing.